


Assemble

by onward_came_the_meteors



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU: S.H.I.E.L.D. detains superheroes instead of working with them, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Friendship, Canon Divergence - Avengers (2012), Captured, Chaptered, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Complete, Coulson makes an appearance, Escape, Evil SHIELD (sort of), F/M, First Meetings, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Loki's Scepter (Marvel), Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mind Control, POV Third Person, Pre-Avengers (2012), Ratings: PG, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Team Dynamics, The 2012 Avengers but like... to the left, The Avengers Are Good Bros, The Avengers becoming friends, The Avengers meet and fight Loki, Thor (Marvel) is Not Stupid, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:07:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 44,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22229146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: AU: S.H.I.E.L.D. detains superheroes instead of working with them.Steve Rogers wakes up from the ice to a place that's just as much a prison.Thor falls to Earth only to be captured... and for once, Loki might not be behind it.Bruce Banner stopped running a long time ago.Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton are just doing their job in the only way they can.And hours after the confession that shakes the world, the man who announced that he was Iron Man ends up powerless.Now, even though the circumstances are different, each of the Avengers must find a way to escape... and in the process save the world from the very organization that swore to protect it.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Comments: 38
Kudos: 98





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is short, but the rest will be normal chapter-length; this is really just the prologue. :)

The quinjet landed, and S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters became alive with activity. Agents swarmed around it, their black suits almost hiding them completely against the night sky, preparing for the newest recruit. 

"Never thought this would happen," Maria Hill remarked, walking in step with the director, Nick Fury. "Of all the people to play superhero--" 

"--he was always a possibility," Fury countered. "He had the money, the influence, and the ego." Whatever the director had thought of saying next, he fell silent. 

Hill was perceptive, however. "Ironic, isn't it? That his father helped found this organization, and now he's a recruit?" 

"I'd prefer to think of it as favorable circumstances." 

The two of them stopped walking once they got closer to the quinjet and the mass of agents. It seemed like the doors of the aircraft were slowly opening.

"You think it'll be hard to get him to cooperate?" Hill asked. 

Fury stared at the quinjet with his one good eye. "No," he said as an unconscious figure was dragged out of the door and carried into the building by several agents. "I think we just need to use the right methods." 

The night was very dark. Visibility wasn't helped by the black building, the black suits of the agents, or the black quinjet. But there was one small light. 

Hard to see, yes, as he was being jostled into headquarters, but even in the darkness, Fury could see the glowing blue circle on the unconscious figure's chest.


	2. Haunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark isn't the only one S.H.I.E.L.D. captured. Steve Rogers wakes up at last, but wherever he is, it's not the 1940s.

Deep within the heart of headquarters, there was another prisoner, although this one wasn't so lucky as to be unconscious. 

On the floor of the room, a man twitched and shook in his sleep before jolting awake with a gasp.

It was like he was still in the ice.

Everything was cold, even though he knew, he knew, that he was unfrozen now, and that wherever he was, it wasn't the Atlantic.

No, wherever this was, it was much, much, worse.

Steve was handcuffed--frigid metal that burned with cold where it touched his skin--and chained, bound to a wall in this horrible, empty, room. 

He didn't know how he'd gotten there. His last memories were of being in that plane, watching the water rise higher and higher, until it closed over his head and everything was black and meaningless. 

And then his eyes had opened. And here he was. 

How long had he been here? Days? Maybe weeks? There was nothing to measure time by, nothing but the same four walls. 

And the door. There was a door, too. A slab of impenetrable steel probably thicker than his head, crisscrossed all over with heavy bars. Whoever had put him in here did not want him to get out. 

Steve let out a ragged breath and closed his eyes, slumping against the wall. The only explanation was that he had been found by Hydra. The Red Skull might have been gone, but the rest hadn't forgotten about Captain America. 

So why wouldn't they just kill him, or try to recreate the serum from him, or whatever it is they're planning to—

Suddenly, he tensed. An ordinary person wouldn't have heard anything, but he could have sworn there had been the slightest crick from outside the door. 

Guess I shouldn't have tempted fate, he thought almost ruefully. 

The door swung open, much more silently than anything that huge had a right to move. Harsh, artificial, light flooded the dark cell and Steve was forced to squint. 

A uniformed figure stepped inside. Steve could see more silhouettes crowded around the doorway, and the unmistakable outlines of guns. 

The door was heaved shut again, needing two of the men outside to do so, and the light shut off, leaving Steve in darkness once more. 

But the man was now inside with him. 

He walked two steps closer, the precision and posture with which he did so making Steve certain that this man was—or had been—a soldier. 

Steve tugged on his chains, but just like the countless other times he'd tried, they refused to break from the wall.

"Yes, those would be our extra-strength models," the man said, almost approvingly.

He didn't have a German accent… maybe he was a kind of spy? 

The man continued talking. "It would take twenty ordinary men to break through that—but of course, you're no ordinary man, are you?" 

Steve stilled. An interrogation. He should have known. But why would Hydra target him for information? Even with the "Captain America" title, he was still really only a soldier… and surely whatever information he had would be useless now anyway? 

How long had he been frozen? 

"So, tell me," the man continued. "Who are you?" 

"Who are you?" Steve shot back. He wished his voice sounded stronger, but it still felt choked with ice. 

The man laughed. "Are you imagining me to be some important authority? Knowing my name won't do you any good. I'm just another agent in this highly specialized government facility." 

"Are—are you Hydra?" 

Another laugh, but this one less amused. "I think we're getting off topic here. So answer the question. Who. Are. You?" 

Steve didn't answer. 

The agent sighed. "Playing stubborn won't do you any good. We have ways of getting you to talk, other… assets, that I assure you won't be as friendly as I am. So again. Who are you?" 

Steve still didn't answer. 

"Why don't you tell me if this name sounds familiar: Steven Grant Rogers?" 

He has to be Hydra. They already know who I am, this is just… a game. They're toying with me, he thought fiercely.

"Perhaps you respond better to Captain America?" 

If he didn't have these chains, he could knock the other man out; a quick punch to the jaw and he'd be down.

"The world's first superhero." The agent seemed to be tasting the words in his mouth. "The man who saved the world. And who could forget his sidekicks? Does the name Howard Stark ring a bell?" 

Steve tried hard not to let anything show on his face. Howard wasn't a soldier, he never fought Hydra face to face… the only explanation is that he was here somewhere too.

He hated to think of his friend trapped in a room like this, not even knowing Steve was nearby. Surely he'd looked for him after the plane crashed. And maybe… maybe he'd just been too late. Maybe Hydra had found Steve first, and was there in wait for when Howard and the others showed up…

"Peggy Carter?" 

Air roared in Steve's ears. They have Peggy they have Peggy no no no they can't—

"How about… James Barnes?" 

Steve couldn't help it. He flinched, and suddenly his mind was full of a snowy mountainscape and a speeding train…

The agent smirked. "I thought so. You know, they never tell you in the history classes what the people were really like. You, Captain America?" He scoffed. "But this has been a lovely chat. Perhaps we'll have another one tomorrow." 

"H-history classes?" The ice was spreading throughout his very blood. 

It's a trick this is the cheapest trick in the book don't fall for it Rogers come on— 

"What year is it?" 

"Telling would be cheating." The agent turned and began to walk back toward the door. 

Steve felt a burst of panic. He couldn't be left alone in here, not when his friends were possibly also in this horrible place, he couldn't be beaten, he couldn't be a prisoner—

"You're going to regret this!" he yelled at the agent's retreating back. "We've defeated Hydra before, we can do it again!" 

"You've beaten Hydra before, soldier," the agent said mockingly as the door opened again. "But you've never beaten us." 

The door shut with a finality that caused a ringing in Steve's ears and left him in darkness again, but in the brief burst of light from the hallway, he had caught a glimpse of the symbol on the door. 

A circle. Angular shapes forming an eagle. And six letters.

S.H.I.E.L.D.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Next update will be next Friday... Tony Stark makes an appearance
> 
> :)


	3. Oh My Gosh They Were Roomates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark is in an unfamiliar place... and apparently S.H.I.E.L.D. wants him to make new friends.

Three hours.

Tony Stark could do a lot of things in three hours. He could design a new machine, give some speeches, annoy Pepper, you name it. 

In this case, he had spent three hours sitting in this room. This dark, empty, room.

Or it would have been dark if it weren't for the soft blue glow in his chest. 

The arc reactor had been ripped out by Obadiah Stane earlier that night, before a series of sheer craziness that led to Tony putting on his suit and stopping him. 

The part that bothered him wasn't the fight. Wasn't the destruction. It was the aftermath.

The part he couldn't remember.

Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick… three hours. 

Three hours of blurry, disjointed memories like puzzle pieces that didn't match the picture on the box.

The annihilated rubble of the building. Stane's giant suit breaking apart. Pepper, and Rhodey, and Happy, the whole world, everyone, surrounding him, wanting to hear about it. Iron Man. He was Iron Man now. And there had been a press conference and he had said… he'd had notes with him, right? He'd had a scripted speech. Cameras had been flashing, and he had been talking, and what had he said he had said something…

"I am Iron Man."

Boom.

The mob of reporters had exploded, and then he was in his car somehow, and they were going back home? No, he had a meeting. A meeting with who? Pepper, Pepper had told him about it—where was she—and she'd said don't be late, she said these people didn't like to wait… 

A man… there had been a man he was meeting with, the one who'd kept trying to talk to him about some program, some… initiative. 

Agent. He was some kind of agent. An agent for…

Tony groaned. He'd been racking his brain for hours and still couldn't remember. There was a big blank in his memory between now and that press conference. He'd been knocked out, or drugged, or something. 

Kidnapped twice in one year. Yay for him.

This was definitely not Afghanistan, though. 

His captors, whoever they were—whatever shady government agency that Agent guy worked for was—had been smart. All of his clothes had been taken and replaced with a plain white shirt and pants. No shoes. His watch was gone, as was any tiny piece of technology he'd had on him… besides, of course, the one in him.

"I guess they think even I'm not crazy enough to take apart my own chest," Tony muttered aloud, looking down at the arc reactor. 

It wouldn't need to come to that. After the little incident with the Ten Rings, his friends would be prepared for another kidnapping. Pepper was probably sending out the legion as he thought. 

"So, which could it be this time." Maybe it was strange to talk to himself, but he was so used to JARVIS that even without his AI, it had become a habit. "Do they want money, weapons, maybe some fun in the Iron Man suit… definitely that last one. Calling it now." 

His apologies to whatever underpaid security guard was watching the cameras in here, because he might just give them a heck of a—

Suddenly, he became aware of a commotion in the hallway. Hurried footsteps, at least one person shouting… he barely had time to register it as the door to his cell was shoved open and a man was flung inside. 

The man hit the wall, which—ow—but immediately stumbled back up and tried to reach the door. The men on the other side—military types, guns, uniforms, the whole look—slammed it shut. Tony heard the clicks of several locks and then the clang that meant bars.

"No!" the man was yelling, pulling futilely at the door's edges. "You can't—can't do this… dangerous… " His voice sank into nothingness, torn and ragged from what must have been more shouting. Breathing heavily, the strange man fell to the floor.

"Yeah, that door only opens from the outside," Tony said, standing and carefully approaching the man on the floor. "Terribly inconsiderate of them, really—"

The man's head jerked up as though noticing him for the first time. His eyes filled with terror and he pressed himself back against the wall. 

"Hey, man, I don't know what's going on here either, but I'm not that scary—" Tony started, taking a step closer.

"No! Get back!" the man cried. He was wearing the same clothes as Tony, but his were almost completely shredded in places. "I know why they put me in here! You're in danger!" 

"Yes. I'm in a cell. There are men with guns outside. I don't know how I got here but I'm not ruling out the possibility of brain damage, and the only reason I'm alive is this." He tapped his chest where the reactor sat. "I would call that danger." 

The man shook his head. "You don't understand. You—get away from me!"

"Okay!" Tony finally backed up. "Drama queen! I am standing back! Happy?" 

The man shivered, pulling his knees to his chest. "It's not safe for you to be in here with me," he said in a slightly calmer voice, if "calm" could mean "only 98% likely to have a breakdown in less than five minutes." 

"It's not safe to be here, period." Tony shrugged. "So, how'd you get here? You build a metal suit and fight a trusted mentor, too?"

The man shook his head slowly, then stopped, looking more closely at Tony. "Wait… are you Tony Stark?" 

"Well, I am wounded it took so long, maybe I need to do some more publicity—" 

"The weapons guy?" 

Tony froze. "Not anymore." 

The man seemed to realize he'd hit a sensitive area. "Um, sorry. I, uh, don't keep track of the news much?" 

"How long have you been here?" Tony asked abruptly. 

The man looked at the ceiling and tapped his fingers as though counting. "Almost four years." 

Tony let out a long breath. "And the last thing you remember before you got here?" 

"I was in India. I was everywhere, and nowhere, for a while, but… one day, this—this agent, I guess, corners me, and…" The man waved a hand at the room. "Must have drugged me." 

"Personally, I'm a fan of the 'hit them on the head until they fall down' theory," Tony mused. 

The man laughed, a broken sound. "Yeah, see, that wouldn't work for me." 

"So who are you?" Tony asked. "I'd say you tell me yours and I'll tell you mine, but tragically being famous ruins the concept of meet-and-greet." He offered a hand, which was not his typical play. Hand-shaking fell firmly into the "don't hand me things" category, even if sometimes it couldn't be avoided. But he and this man were in the same boat, so to speak, and Tony figured if they had any chance at figuring out what was going on, they'd need to cooperate. 

The man didn't take his hand—it would have involved standing up and actually walking closer to Tony, things that this guy seemed determined to avoid—but he did answer. "My name's Bruce Banner." 

"Nice to meet you, even if the situation isn't ideal," Tony said. He paused. "Actually, your name does sound slightly familiar, what did you do?" 

"Um. Science." 

The last time I was kidnapped and trapped somewhere with a scientist, things didn't go so well, Tony almost blurted out, but what he actually said was: "You're going to have to give me more than that." 

"You won't have heard of me from my old job, if you knew my name at all it would be because you designed the weapons that were meant to hunt me down!" Bruce Banner burst out, then immediately shrank back down. "... sorry. I shouldn't have yelled, just…" 

"This situation," Tony nodded. "Understandable. But maybe rewind to the part where I designed Banner-hunting weapons." 

"It's not important." 

"Sounds pretty important." 

"Look," Bruce said, shifting. "It's kind of obvious we're gonna be stuck in here a while. Just… just leave me alone, and… nothing worse will happen." 

Tony barked a laugh. "We're trapped in a cell, Banner, how much worse are you picturing?" 

Bruce slowly lifted his head from his knees, a haunted look in his eyes. "Much worse."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	4. We Strive to Do What's Right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If the superpowered Avengers are being detained by S.H.I.E.L.D., then what does that mean for regular mortals Natasha and Clint? Well, it seems like they're just doing their jobs.

"Black Widow and Hawkeye." 

"Hawkeye and Black Widow." 

"Nat and Clint?" 

"How about insufferable idiot—"

"—and Clint," Clint Barton finished, grinning at his fellow agent. He and Natasha Romanoff, code-named the Black Widow, had just got back a few days ago from their latest mission. It had gone surprisingly well, Nat obtaining almost all the information before Clint had to fire a single shot. And neither of them had to spend more than an hour in medical. Truly, a rare success.

Natasha put her feet up on the backrest of the chair as she leaned back with her head on the desk. "I think we could come up with a better code name." 

"Do you?" 

"What's the point of being a spy if I'm not good with words?" 

"The pizza?" Natasha made a face as Clint laughed. S.H.I.E.L.D. was good at many things: intelligence, secrecy, peace-protecting missions—but decent cafeteria food was not one of them.

There was a knock at the door a second before Phil Coulson stepped inside. "I prefer the lasagna, myself."

"'Sup, Phil?" 

"Agent Barton." Coulson turned to Natasha. "Agent Romanoff, you have interrogation duty on Recruit 7418 in half an hour..." 

Natasha nodded. "Got it." 

"… and Agent Barton, I have your paperwork for the last mission, and the director wishes me to inform you that it is not optional." 

Clint sighed and took the stack from Coulson, giving half of the papers to Natasha. "Why do we even still use paper for these things?" he muttered. 

Coulson ignored him and turned to leave.

"Why in such a hurry?" Natasha asked, having tossed her half of the packet on the desk behind her head without looking at it. 

"I have a job to do, you know. Not all of us have free time after missions." 

"Does this job involve the new Initiative Recruit you guys brought in earlier?" she asked slyly. 

"Natasha, honestly, you're a spy. I would have expected something less direct," Coulson said, ignoring Clint's cry of "wait, a new recruit?" 

Natasha shrugged. "Sometimes less is more." A smirk. "And if you're going to tell me anyway, it doesn't matter how I ask." 

"You two are going to make me lose my job." 

"So?" 

Another sigh. Clint suspected that Coulson used up at least 90% of the weekly emotion he was allowed to show when he and Natasha were with him, and that emotion was "regretting of life choices." 

"Who is it?" Natasha pressed.

"If I tell you, the name doesn't leave this room. This is highly sensitive information." Coulson sounded serious… yeah, serious even for him. 

"Does that mean the recruit would be someone we've heard of?" Clint asked. He spun his brain, but couldn't recall any former mission encounters or anyone that might have a reason to be recruited for the Initiative. 

As for Natasha, she was silent, and Clint suspected she'd already figured it out.

"It's Tony Stark," Coulson said quietly.

Oh. 

OH.

He'd seen part of the press conference on TV, bored out of his mind while waiting for Natasha to be excused from her debriefing, and hadn't paid much attention to it at the time, but "The truth is… I am Iron Man," wasn't exactly hard to ignore. Especially not with the media explosion that had followed almost before the words were completely out of Stark's mouth. Clint hadn't taken it seriously at first, but now...

"All that was true, then?" Clint asked. "The stuff with the metal suit and the fight at the Stark Industries building… Tony Stark is a recruit?" 

"It's hard to believe, I know," Coulson said. "But he fits almost every part of the criteria, so we brought him in." 

"It's not a physical attribute, though," Natasha pointed out. "Without the suit, he's just another man. Why--"

"Because the fact that he did build that suit makes him a threat," Coulson interrupted. "Because he said it himself: he's not just another man anymore, he's Iron Man. And, well," he folded his hands together, "S.H.I.E.L.D. can't allow that." 

Neither Clint nor Natasha responded. Detaining genetically enhanced superheroes was one thing, but doing the same to what was essentially an ordinary man was another.

Coulson gave them a hard look. "Listen, this conversation stays between us, right? You two don't have the clearance to know about our newest recruit." 

"Of course," Natasha assured him. Flipping through her packet, she gave him a playful smile. "If you're in a rule-bending mood today, you could just give us a pass on the paperwork…" 

"All right, I'm leaving," Coulson announced. "Before you two can corrupt the integrity of S.H.I.E.L.D. any further!" The agent left the room, doing that annoying thing where he didn't close the door all the way. 

Clint stepped forward and pushed it the rest of the way closed. He and Natasha were now alone in the office.

Natasha had dropped her smile and her paperwork as soon as Coulson left. "Look," she started, leaning forward so that red curls fell over her face. "I know this might not seem like the most ethical thing in the world--" 

"Nat, I know Stark is a self-centered billionaire, but you have to admit that detaining ordinary people isn't in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s mission." 

"--but it's not our call to make. S.H.I.E.L.D. gives the orders. We follow them. That's how it works. That's how we keep our jobs, Clint." 

"Like either of us would have trouble finding another job." 

"I don't know, 'assassin' doesn't always look so good on a resumé," Natasha said dryly. 

Clint sat back down in the chair and spun around in it once without saying anything. 

"This isn't about Stark, is it." 

"I really need to stop hanging out with spies if I want to keep my feelings secret, huh?" 

"Clint. Is everything okay with Laura and the kids?" 

"Oh yeah. Fine. Absolutely perfect. It's just… I don't know." Clint continued to spin around in the chair. "I missed Cooper's open house, and Lila's only grown about a foot… and you know I signed up for this job, and I should be all right with missing things… but only if I know I'm doing the right thing here."

Natasha was quiet for a moment. "I've done the whole 'blindly following orders' thing before. I'm not doing that now. If what we were doing here was wrong, really wrong, neither of is would be sitting here and you know it." She reached out and put a hand on the armrest of Clint's chair. "I know it sounds overdone, but we're protecting the world here." 

"You're right--don't look at me like that, I admit you're right all the time--and I know you're right. I just… wonder sometimes. If what we do here is worth it." 

"We have a choice. We choose to keep everyone safe." 

A long moment passed, silent except for the squeak squeak of Clint's spinning chair on the rubbery carpet.

"And so, after Hawkeye and Black Widow," Clint emphasized his name coming first, "proved they weren't mindless S.H.I.E.L.D. drones, they immediately began to fill out their paperwork." 

"This sounds like a thrilling story," Natasha smirked. 

"Oh it is. And as the Black Widow in question has just informed me, it also has a righteous moral message." 

"Well, we can't let them down, can we?" Natasha picked up a pen. "Let's do our duty." 

Clint opened his packet of paperwork and began to scrawl inside the boxes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! The next chapter will likely revisit Tony and Bruce, and should hopefully be posted next week!


	5. Things That are Glowy and Pointy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony attempts to tell his story, but his audience is less than rapt. Elsewhere, a certain Norse god finds himself somewhere that is not Asgard.

"--and that is when I woke up here," Tony finished. He had been sitting cross-legged on the floor of his room--gah, the room, THE room, he refused to claim it as his--for the past half hour, explaining to Bruce the events that had led from Tony Stark, a billionaire driving through the desert listening to AC/DC on the radio, to Tony Stark, still a billionaire but now locked in a cell with absolutely no radio in sight. 

"Pretty crazy, actually, when you think about it," Tony continued. "That's why I don't think about it too hard. Are you thinking about it that hard, Bruce? … Bruce?" 

Bruce Banner lifted his head with a start, blinking. "Sorry, what?" 

"Did you seriously just fall asleep during my dramatic retelling of my multiple kidnappings in the same year? I worked very hard on that." 

"Sorry, I just… sorry." Bruce closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them again. Undeterred, Tony kept talking.

"If you're going to fall asleep, though, maybe you shouldn't do it right in front of that door. If it opens again like it did last time--" Tony made a whoosh-ing motion with his hands. "--then we might have some squished scientists on our hands." 

"Mmhmm." 

"I swear if you're falling asleep again." 

"I'm not! I'm getting up." Bruce slowly uncurled from his position and started to stand up. Halfway through, though, he staggered and had to grab onto the wall for support.

Tony frowned. "You okay?" 

"Yeah… but everything's kind of… spinning? And… yeah, definitely… definitely spinning… " 

"What've they been doing to you in there?" Tony asked. 

Bruce shook his head. "Don't really remember… 'm fine." His actions were a clear contrast to his words, however, because he was starting to slowly slide back down the wall. 

"Okay listen, I'm going to ignore that obvious lie because we need to get you away from that door." Tony stepped forward, wishing he had anything else at his disposal besides… yeah, he had literally nothing. 

Bruce gazed dully up at him, eyes unfocused. "What's that?" 

"What's what." 

"That." He pointed to Tony's arc reactor. 

"You mean my arc reactor--wait a second, I literally just explained that to you." It wasn't usually Tony's thing to be so concerned for someone he'd just met, but the other man's collectedness had done a complete 180 in the past three minutes. "And before you fell asleep, too, so you know you can't pull that excuse on me." 

"Hmm… arc reactor," Bruce repeated, either not hearing or choosing to ignore the rest of the sentence. "It's very glowy." 

"I guess it is. Listen, I'm going to need you to--" 

"How did you get it to capture the electron release from the beta decay instead of just balancing the proton count?" 

"--move from the doorway. Wait, what? Oh." Tony snapped his fingers. "I forgot you were a scientist. You see, the electric circuit--wait, hang on, quit distracting me." He walked over to where the other man was slumped against the wall. "C--" 

As soon as he was within a few feet, Bruce's head snapped up. "Wait!" He paused for a moment, clearly struggling to think through the effects of whatever their captors had done to him. "You can't--" 

"I've heard and I don't care," Tony said, edging even closer. "You are not okay right now and I am moving you away from this extremely heavy and potentially dangerous door. That's all I care about." 

"You can't be too close," Bruce protested. "It's dangerous. I might--"

"You haven't told me what's dangerous, so--" Tony placed a hand on the other man's shoulders--finally someone shorter than he was--and started to guide him away from the door as gently as he could, but the moment he did, Bruce practically jumped away, almost falling over in his unclear state. 

"I said get away!" he cried, and for a second Tony saw--it was the lighting--Bruce's eyes--it was not the lighting--turn green. 

Tony didn't need any encouragement to back away after that. His mind was racing a million miles an hour, already throwing up theories. 

That just happened. 

"Okay," he said slowly. "I think I'm ready to listen now. So… what's so dangerous about you?" 

Before Bruce could say anything, the door to the room--see, Tony knew it was a good idea to move away from it--swung open again, gliding noiselessly over the floor. A team of intimidating-to-most-people-but-not-to-Tony-Stark-because-he's-Tony-Stark agents were standing outside. Yep, still huge, still armed, still scowling. 

The agent in the front took in the scene before him and smiled humorlessly. "So, Stark. I see you've met the Hulk." 

..................................................................................................................................................................................

Elsewhere...

Lightning was flashing all around him, but in an odd turn of events, Thor couldn’t tell whether or not it was coming from him. That hadn’t happened since he was two--or maybe two hundred?--first learning to control his powers. His current situation was very reminiscent of that, actually. He had no idea what was going on and he was afraid of getting smashed into a tiny splat of thunder god.

Everything around him was a mess, a downpour of streaming rain and crackling thunder, and all he knew for sure was that he was falling. 

And falling.

And falling.

And… 

… yeah, falling. 

For the first few minutes, Thor had fought against his aerial imprisonment, shouting and threatening and even pleading to be let out. Now, after he had been falling for what seemed like hours, he had resigned himself that wherever he was going, it was going to take a good long while to get there.

This was why he purposely AVOIDED traveling by the endless dark space void. The commute was terrible, it was full of tourists, and everyone knew the Bifrost was a much more convenient method.

Unless of course, the Bifrost has just been destroyed by an almighty hammer and Heimdall has possibly been deprived of a job--wait, who was he kidding, Asgard couldn't run without him--and therefore Bifrost travel has been made impossible.

And whatever this was, it was certainly not the Bifrost. 

He wasn't even sure how he'd got here. Wherever "here" was; it just seemed to be an endless sky-like landscape useless for everything but “plummeting,”but it had to be somewhere, didn't it? 

The last thing he remembered was slamming his hammer against the bridge again and again, until cracks spiderwebbed across the surface and eventually shattered it into thousands of rainbow shards. 

Then Loki had tumbled off the edge, and Thor had grabbed onto him, and he couldn't hold on, and they were both going to fall--and then Odin had appeared, and he held onto Thor-- 

\--and honestly, what had happened after that was anyone's guess. Clearly Thor had fallen off. But Loki… Thor had been the only thing keeping him from taking the plunge. If he'd lost his grip, then was Loki also down here somewhere, falling just as Thor was?

If he was, they might be in for an awkward landing. 

If this "landing" thing was ever going to happen, which at this point seemed doubtful. 

As if whatever cosmic force held him had just been waiting for him to think those thoughts--Heimdall? No, Heimdall wouldn't do this, and Heimdall would have brought him back by now--his surroundings began to change. 

Did the rain and lightning dissipate? No. Maybe that was coming from him after all.

But everything else seemed to speed up, colors whirling and cycloning, condensing into a single point, a hole which Thor was fast falling to.

The roar of the wind--how was there wind? Wasn't he in space, or in a portal?-- grew to a scream in his ears, everything pushing on him, pushing down, forcing him toward the end of this vertical tunnel--

\--and then he fell through it. 

And then there was more falling, but this was faster, and everything was darker, but he couldn't register it because the ground was coming closer and it was only a matter of seconds before-- 

SMACK.

Thor opened his eyes against the ground. Slowly, he turned over, starting to stand up. He didn't seem to be injured from the fall, but it seemed wise to gather his bearings before doing anything else. 

It was nighttime, and he was on a street. Rain had begun to fall from the sky, harder and faster. A low rumble of thunder rolled in the distance, seconds before lightning crackled across the sky. 

There was some kind of large building on the other side of the street. It didn't look like anything on Asgard. Too square, too dark, too box-like. Nothing like Asgard, but a great deal like a certain other he knew. 

He was on Midgard. 

Again?

This place, however, wasn't like any building he'd seen in New Mexico. In fact, what it most reminded him of--with its identical black cars going in and out, with the harsh lights spotlighting every entrance, with the occasional suited agent appearing in a doorway--was the government base that had been but around his hammer. The place that had taken Jane's work--they'd also given it back, true, but the fact remained that it hadn't been the best first impression--and briefly attempted to interrogate him. 

What had it been called again… S.H.I.E.L.D.? 

Mortals and their stupid names. 

Now, to get out of here… 

Thor looked around, sloshing a little in the puddles formed by the endless downpour. There was no sign of his hammer anywhere.

That would make leaving a little more difficult, especially since he had just destroyed the Bifrost. 

"Heimdall," he tried anyway. No response. He tried again, louder: "Heimdall!" 

"Don't move." 

The voice behind him was female. Definitely not Heimdall. 

Thor turned around slowly, only to be greeted by a team of agents, each pointing a gun at him. The one in the front--most likely the one who had spoken--waited a moment to make sure Thor wasn't going to attack, then spoke into one of those handheld devices mortals had. 

"Director, we've got another recruit. It seems to be the same one from New Mexico… yes. Outside the building." The agent put her device away and addressed Thor again. "Where's your weapon?" 

Thor didn't answer, busy thinking about said weapon himself. Taking out these agents certainly would be easier with it, considering that right now he was technically unarmed… not to say he couldn't take them all without Mjolnir, of course. He was Asgardian, and these were some squishy mortals. 

But weren't these particular squishy mortals supposed to be the good guys? 

It had seemed like it in New Mexico, after the fight with the Destroyer and when they'd given Jane her work back. 

"I said, where's your weapon?" the agent repeated. "The hammer?" Her eyes raked over his armor and cape. "Wherever you've got it, you'd better put it down." 

So they clearly knew who he was; the chances of this being a misunderstanding were slim to none. 

Still, his father's words from before he was banished to Earth reverberated around in his head. 

Pride.

Arrogance. 

Stupidity. 

If he attacked a team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, he'd never again be trusted in this realm. 

Maybe he could still fix the situation.

"I don't have my hammer," Thor said in his calmest voice, ignoring the way the guns in every agent's hand jerked to him. "And I am not here to cause harm in any way. There's no need for the g--" 

Zzzzzzzip.

A dart zoomed through the air and hit its mark on the exposed part of Thor's neck, right underneath his drenched hair. 

All the agents backed up.

Thor laughed. "You think this puny dart can--"

Zzzzzzzip. Zzzzzzzip. Zzzzzzzip. 

More darts, shooting out faster than he could blink, piercing every part of him not covered by armor. 

He didn't feel anything from them.

Actually, not quite true.

He was getting pretty annoyed. 

"Hear this!" Thor shouted. "As I said, I have not come here as your enemy, but if you continue to shoot me, that very well might change!" 

Most of the agents took another step back, but to her credit, the first agent did not. 

"It's nothing personal," she reassured him, still pointing her gun. "We just need you for an interrogation." 

Thor started to say something else, but the world had momentarily gone white. He shook it off, but the tranquilizer was beginning to take effect. 

"I've already been interrogated by S.H.I.E.L.D.," he managed. 

The agent nodded. "I never said it was your interrogation." 

"Then who--" 

More darts. Everything tilted and fuzzed out. Thor staggered. 

"How much does it take to knock this guy out?" one of the other agents muttered. His voice weaved in and out. The raindrops had vanished… no, they were deafening… raindrops? 

Half buried under at least fifteen of the darts, Thor was forced to his knees. As the tranquilizer, flowed through his system, he could dimly make out another figure approaching, slinging a slim weapon onto his shoulder.

The first agent was speaking to the figure now, her words barely distinct. "Took you long enough, Barton." 

"Hey, not my fault the guy's got like iron skin. Is this the one who said he was a Norse god?" 

"This is him." 

"And that was our strongest tranquilizer, too." 

"Why do you think he's a recruit?" 

"I just thought I'd point that out. Look at this guy…" 

Everything was static for a moment. Voices spoke as though through a bubble and Thor felt his hands land on wet pavement.

"... so what about the other one?" 

"Already inside and locked up. As soon as this guy's ready, he'll join him." 

"That one calling himself a Norse god, too?" 

Darkness was pressing down on him like the entire weight of Asgard's palace. Just as Thor's eyes slipped shut, he caught the last fragment of the first agent's answer.

"Yeah. He said his name was Loki."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	6. The Red Herring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve gets a new interrogator, but their session is interrupted by the antics of a hammer-less god. Natasha decides to investigate.

Steve was almost grateful when the door swung open again. It wasn't like he was going to get any sleep that night anyway--he thought it was night, there was no way to be sure--and there wasn't much to do in the cell except sit and stare at the wall. 

Or yank on the chains, but previous experimentation had revealed that said chains were not likely to be removed from the wall by human force. Even the Captain America type of human force. 

So all Steve could think as a bar of blinding light from the hallway hit him in the face was “it's about time.”

He saw the same hulking silhouettes of guards in the hallway--they could be different guards, but again, no way to be sure--but instead of the agent from before, a red-haired woman in black gear stepped in.

She was nowhere near as imposing as the first agent, but as she drew closer, the outside light illuminating her face for only a few seconds before it was closed, all of Steve's instincts screamed danger. 

But what did it matter, knowing that, because there wasn't anything he could do while stuck in these chains, and he was just a prisoner now, like Bucky had been, except he wasn't going to be rescued--

Steve had to stop that train of thought.

The train on the mountainside and it was speeding so fast and he was gone-- 

He shut it down. "I don't suppose you're going to tell me where I am." 

"I'm not." The door wasn't completely closed this time. A sliver of light was still visible, just enough so he could see her face. 

She was pretty. That was probably why the door wasn't closed. 

But the tiny bit of light also allowed Steve to notice other things, like the gun concealed at her side, or the walkie-talkie in her belt. 

"The last guy didn't tell me either." 

"And I don't think the next guy will." She was staring directly at him, and somehow Steve didn't think it was for the usual reasons. 

No, this woman didn't care that he was Captain America. He was just her next target.

"There's going to be a next guy?" 

Casually, she brushed aside a curl of hair. "Probably not." 

He meant to say something witty and sarcastic, like "good to know," but the words got stuck in his throat. 

He cleared it. "So why'd they send in you?" 

"Maybe I wanted to be sent in." 

"Are you Hydra?" he asked bluntly. He wasn't going to get an honest answer, but manipulating people in close conversation had never been a skill of his. And maybe there was a slight chance it would throw the woman off. 

It did not. He watched her futilely, but there was no change in expression. 

"Funny," she said instead. "I was going to ask the same question." 

Steve had no response. His thoughts were busy doing their best hurricane impression. 

She was just trying to bait him--this is why the last man mentioned Peggy and Bucky--but what does it mean--did people think he changed sides--or that he’d been brainwashed by Red Skull--but that didn’t make sense--he’d talked to Peggy before he crashed--they couldn't think that was fake--unless they didn't know about it--but they'd have to--right?--who were these people anyway--what did that mean--

"What's the last thing you remember?" 

Steve had to struggle to pull his thoughts out of the swirling tumult. "If you found me, you should be able to figure it out." 

"Why did you do it?" 

He had an answer this time--actually, he had quite a few, ranging from “people were going to die” to “there wasn't any time” to “it was the only thing I could do”… but he never got to say it.

Because a thunderous crash shook the room. 

Steve reflexively tried to jump to his feet, but only managed to pull the chains to an awkward angle. What was that?

It was clear from the woman's wide eyes as she took several steps backward, assessing the room around her, that she didn't know either. 

Unless she was acting…

The walkie-talkie at the woman's side staticked angrily. Distracted, she automatically reached for it and held it to her ear. 

"Whatever that was better not have been--" she started, but the voice on the other end interrupted. It was male, and in the small, echoey, cell, Steve could hear every word.

"We've got a problem, Natasha." 

The woman--Natasha--narrowed her eyes, even though the other person couldn't see her. "No." 

"We need you on level four." In the background, Steve could hear yelling and more crashes, though none as forceful as the first, to be felt from another room. From wherever level four was, apparently, but that could be in the room next door or ten floors above. 

"I'm in with a recruit, Phil," Natasha said. "That's my job, not loud noises." 

"Barton's already here." 

"And like I said--" 

"It's another recruit." The man--Phil?--sounded like he was quickly running out of options. Steve guessed that Natasha wasn't easy to manipulate. 

Natasha was silent for a moment. "Not Stark." 

"No." 

Another pause.

"I'm on my way," she finally said, slipping the device back in her pocket and striding toward the door. The guards on the other side, apparently having heard, pulled open the huge door and she vanished into a mass of other black-clad agents. 

The door shut again. 

Steve was alone again.

Alone except for one thought.

He kept twisting the word in his mind, wondering if he'd heard it right, if it was really true. 

Stark?

■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□

Normally, it wouldn't have taken such a short amount of time to get to level four from level six, but Natasha had experience. 

Also, everyone in the whole darn agency had mysteriously disappeared, which had certainly emptied the elevators.

She stepped out of the elevator once it clicked to a halt at level four, and surprise--the whole darn agency had apparently relocated to this exact spot. 

Not that she blamed them--a crash that powerful wasn't too out of the ordinary at S.H.I.E.L.D., but one caused by a recruit, all of whom were unarmed and restrained, was an event. 

There was a copious amount of people in the crowd, but Natasha had the eyes of a spy. She spotted Clint right away, hanging near the wall while everyone talked around him. 

As she made her way over, she caught snippets from other agents' conversations. Things like: 

"--the strongest yet--"

"--says he's a god--" 

"--the other one? In another location--" 

"--Fury said--" 

Clint noticed her immediately. Hawkeye, she thought distractedly. 

"Where'd you come from? I thought they had you with a recruit," he said. His hair was wet. Given how the rest of his clothes were dripping in a similar manner, it was probably from rain and not the shower. Probably. 

"They did." Natasha continued half-sarcastically. "I know you're so jealous that I got out of work early." 

"Well, you should be jealous of me," Clint countered. "If you believe what everyone's saying--" he waved a hand around at the buzzing crowd "--then I got to meet a god." 

No such thing. Natasha grinned. "'Meet?'" 

He matched it. "My tranquilizers certainly got to know him." 

There came another crash, nearly as strong as the first. Here, so close to the source, the whole hallway nearly shook. Like an earthquake, Natasha thought, who'd been involved in several. 

The chatter of the other agents broke up momentarily, but when it became clear that another wasn't going to follow, it nervously spattered into being again. 

The elevator doors slid open again. And Nick Fury, along with several armed agents, emerged. 

The crowd wordlessly moved aside, allowing him to pass through to the end of the hallway. He didn't say anything. 

Why was he the only one actually going to look at the recruit? Was everyone else under orders not to engage? 

Or were they all scared? 

She didn't even have to say anything to Clint, but in a few seconds the two of them were following Fury down the hallway. The sound of footsteps behind them meant that a few of the agents had also decided to come along. 

The rest, evidently, were scared. 

Well, she wasn’t scared of anything. 

She didn't mean that in an arrogant sort of way, or to brag, the way some agents did. Rather, she'd just been subjected to so much over her life that it was an adaptation for survival, built up around her like a hard shell.

And no recruit, however good at shaking things, had ever cracked it. 

The end of the hallway opened up into a circular room, like an amphitheater but on a smaller scale. And instead of facing an empty central space, the platform ringed around a cage. 

It was large, it was clear, and it was currently occupied by S.H.I.E.L.D.'s newest Initiative Recruit. 

Unlike nearly all other recruits, this one was apparently still wearing the clothes they'd found him in--armor and a red cape--but whether that was just because they couldn't find anything else that would fit or because no one wanted to get that close, she wasn't sure. 

Upon seeing Fury and the other agents enter, the new recruit stopped pounding on the walls of the cage. "What is the meaning of this?" he shouted. 

Fury didn't flinch. "This is just a precaution, Thor." 

"I demand that you let me out of here!" 

"I'd like you to tell me about your friend," Fury continued, ignoring his words. 

Natasha just kept watching. She and Clint were standing slightly to the side, just out of Thor's peripheral vision. 

Thor. Really? She supposed that's where the "Norse god" rumor got started. 

At least it had better be a rumor, because she didn’t think they were really equipped for that. 

"I came alone." But the slight hesitation before Thor spoke was not missed by anyone in the room. 

"You sure about that?" Fury pressed a button on the wall. A screen flicked to life, displaying an image of another man, black-haired and dressed in a green robe-like-thing, in a cage similar to Thor's. 

The image was only projected for ten seconds, but it was enough for Thor to recognize whoever it was. He slowly took his hands away from the cage wall and hung them loosely at his sides.

"You should not try to hold him here. He is very skilled--he will escape." 

"So you do know each other." 

"He is my brother." 

Natasha winced. Family always made this kind of thing difficult. There was always a brother, or a daughter, or a father, or someone the person needed to "get back to." An inspiration for escape. 

So far, Thor didn't seem to be one of those types, but Natasha could tell by how serious his voice had just gotten that his brother was very important and nicely staying in this cell might not be. Even if right now he was trying to get Fury to see his side of reason, it wouldn't last long. 

"I do not say this out of any personal feelings for him," Thor continued loudly, drowning out the trained silence. If the agents were regular people, Natasha was sure there would be whispering. 

For herself, she remained a silent statue next to Clint. 

"I say it because I am trying to protect you mortals." Strangely believable, even though said mortals had locked him in a cage. "I am sworn to protect Earth, but he is not. When he escapes, he will cause damage and destruction." 

Natasha didn't miss the "when" and neither did anyone else in the room. 

Fury placed his hands on the railing around the platform. "S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters is one of the best-guarded places in the world." 

"Loki is not of this world," Thor said simply. He paused, as though waiting for someone to argue with him, but when no one did, he continued. "If you do not want the headquarters of this S.H.I.E.L.D. to be destroyed, you will release both of us, and I can take him back to Asgard." 

Natasha's eyes narrowed. Loki. The god of trickery. And Asgard was the home of the gods, wasn't it? 

Where had they really come from? 

She didn't really buy "falling out of the sky" as a theory. No offense, Phil. 

Up on the platform, Fury was still talking. Deep in thought, Natasha only caught the end of it. 

"--you will be remaining here," he finished. "Our agents can handle Loki." His voice was confident to everyone around him, but Natasha had known him for a while. Nick Fury wasn't sure at all. 

And anything that made Nick Fury unsure wasn't something Natasha liked. 

Thor shook his head frustratedly. "You may think that you can, but Loki's powers are unlike anything you mortals have ever--" 

"I assure you--" Fury started.

Natasha interrupted both of them. "Powers?" she asked. 

All eyes flicked toward her. Clint subtly poked her in the back, but she ignored him. 

"Yes." Thor latched onto her interjection almost gratefully. "He can--" 

"Agent Romanoff," Fury interrupted. "We have people in with this Loki already, you don't need to--" 

"Then I want to be one of them," she said. She caught Thor's eye. The man who might-or-might-not have been a god was looking almost desperate. 

It would not be good to underestimate this Loki.

And if there was anyone who knew the dangers of underestimating someone, it was the Black Widow. 

"I think we could use you here," Fury said carefully, watching Thor for a reaction. 

Yes, yes, She was one of their best interrogators. The best, if she wanted to feel good about herself. 

But she had a suspicion that everyone's attention was on the wrong Norse god. 

See, Thor was undeniably powerful. You could almost sense it as a thrumming field of electricity around him. With the combination of the muscles, the armor, the cape, and the way he spoke, he was a classic hero from any story. The attention was on him. The priority would be him. 

And as for Loki… from the image she'd seen on the screen, he was nowhere near the same level of awe-inspiring. He didn't look that powerful; he couldn't be dangerous. And a god of trickery could use that thinking to his advantage. 

"You've got enough people," Natasha said. "And you can keep Barton--" 

Fury waved a hand at her impatiently. "Then by all means, go." And let me get back to interrogating the recruit, Natasha, were the unspoken words shown on his face. 

Natasha nodded and without another word, hurried out. 

The cell room and the crowd of agents fell out of view behind the wall. The hallway was empty now. Just like almost every hallway in the building: no decorations, no identifying features, and none of those helpful maps you saw in hotels. This way to the specially designed God-Proof ™ cells. 

In short, there was essentially no easy way for Natasha to find Loki without more information.

Good thing she was a spy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	7. The First Step

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Tony Stark's (second) disappearance, Pepper is left to track him down with only a single clue. Meanwhile, Tony and Bruce are still at the mercy of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Pepper Potts was supposed to be asleep. 

She was an organized person by nature. Therefore, she tried to maintain a relatively consistent schedule. And 1:57 A.M.? That was definitely sleeping time.

Now, she could be flexible. Being flexible was a requirement of working at Stark Industries, where every so often--too often--there would be "sorry not going to this meeting" or "the plane can't have left already, right?" or "so I've had this great idea…" or any number of other "eccentricities," as the PR department called them. But sometimes, she just wanted to go home after a long day and go to bed. And sometimes, albeit rarely, it would actually work out. 

Tonight was not one of those times. 

It was now 1:58 A.M., and Pepper was awake, but that was the least of her worries, because she was in her car, attempting to drive through a downpour (why was it raining so hard? The weather report hadn't said anything about thunderstorms) and her phone was to her ear with multiple people panicking at the other end, and Tony Stark was missing.

Again. 

"I told you, the last time I saw him was at the press conference," Pepper repeated into the phone. It shifted slightly between her ear and her shoulder. "The last time anyone saw him was at the press conference." 

"I can get to Afghanistan." Rhodey was not one of the panicking ones. "Assuming it's the Ten Rings again, we can narrow down the area--" 

"But what if it's not?" Happy, unfortunately, was one of the panicking ones. "How long has it even been? He could be anywhere by now!" 

Neither of them answered, but Pepper had an idea of the timeline, and she suspected Rhodey did too. 

After the press conference and the "I am Iron Man", Tony had gone home in a whirlwind of media coverage. Pepper had started handling the fallout from said "I am Iron Man," and been so wrapped up she hadn't spoken to Tony for the rest of the night. Rhodey and Happy had only had time for brief words at the conference. 

Security footage from JARVIS showed a man in Tony's living room later that night. No one Pepper recognized, but that wasn't surprising. The man wore an eye patch and a black coat. There was no sign of how he'd gotten in. 

Time stamp: 10:43. The footage showed the man speaking to Tony before it abruptly went black. 

JARVIS hadn't been able to keep recording from that point, but he apparently could activate an emergency protocol, which was essentially "if something happens, call Pepper." 

Pepper had been called. 

Pepper had tried to call Tony. 

There had been no answer. 

Pepper had made several more calls. 

Pepper had gotten in her car. 

"It's been about two hours," Pepper finally answered, swerving the car around a corner. "The security footage cut out, but I can--" 

A red light loomed up out of nowhere. Startled, Pepper slammed on the brakes, narrowly avoiding the car in front of her. 

The sudden jolt had sent her purse flying off of the passenger seat, all the stuff exploding against the car floor. Pepper mentally groaned. 

"Pepper? What was that?" 

The light flicked to green and she continued driving, looking for a place to quickly pull over. "Sorry, I'm driving, I meant--" 

Ooh, there was a spot. 

"--I can send the clips, but the last--" 

She pulled over and leaned down, reaching for her fallen purse. 

"--thing it shows is the man talking to Tony. JARVIS is trying to run facial recognition, but so far there's nothing. We have no idea who it was," she finished, stuffing papers into the purse. 

"Soon, we'll have every possible resource," Rhodey promised. "We found him last time, we'll find him now." 

Pepper closed her eyes. The cold material of the phone pressed into her cheek. "It's different. Last time we had an explosion and a bunch of military vehicles. Now we have a twenty-second security video and--" She stopped talking. 

"Pepper?" Happy this time. 

She didn't answer, staring at one of the objects that had scattered across her car floor. It was a small rectangular card, just like any other business card she might have been handed at a public function. 

Except this one had the word "S.H.I.E.L.D." printed across it.

And underneath, in neatly written cursive, "You'll be hearing from us." 

"Pepper?" Happy repeated. 

Pepper picked up the card. "Change of plans. We have more than the security video." 

□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■

"Oh, excellent. A dramatic one-liner." Tony Stark looked back and forth between the various agents (or, more specifically, the very obvious guns of the various agents) while trying to hide the fact that he'd just seen the most disturbing thing and was freaking the heck out. "And a catchy name, too. The Hulk. Not particularly descriptive, though. No idea what that is, or why I'm supposed to be frightened of it. So really, you're not doing that great of a job." 

The first agent, who had a good half foot on Tony, loomed a step farther into the cell. "And just what do you think our job is, Stark?" 

To lock him in a cell with a dude whose eyes GLOW AND CHANGE COLOR like WHAT-- 

Tony shrugged. "The usual. Try to intimidate me into giving up information on or building some machine." 

None of the agents tried to convince him otherwise. That could be either good or bad. 

Actually, he was trapped in a cell. Definitely bad.

Thoughts spun through his mind. The Hulk… he'd heard that before. 

But the details of just where he'd heard it before… that was the tricky part. Tricky… and almost definitely dangerous.

You're in danger, Bruce had said. You don't understand. 

He needed a plan. 

He did not, as of current, have a plan.

He just had to keep talking and find out what he could. 

Thankfully, talking had never been one of Tony's lesser-honed skills. He could be chattering on and his mind would still be whirring like a caffeinated DUME-E. 

"So, I know what your job is, I know what my job is--at least the job you want me to do--so, the only thing that I'm not sure about--" Tony indicated with a hand at Bruce "--is why he's here." 

Bruce looked like he wasn't breathing. "Tony…" he said, voice low. "You don't want to get into this." 

"Seriously," Tony continued, ignoring Bruce, because honestly, didn't he understand that he was trying to derail the situation? "Guy's a scientist who's been… retired for, what, a couple years now? Not sure what he could know that I wouldn't, or offer in the intimidation department…" 

A round of smirks appeared on the agents' faces. Including that of the first one, who said, "If you want to see what he can do in the intimidation department, it can certainly be arranged." 

Tony put on his best confused face, turning to Bruce, who pushed himself up off the floor and took a few swaying steps backward. 

"Listen," he said, holding his hands out. "That's not going to happen… I don't want…" 

"Sadly for you, our bosses don't care about what you want," the first agent said sardonically. He jerked his head at the other agents, who moved into the room and surrounded the two captives. Tony felt a cold circle of metal press itself into his back, right through the cheap prisoner attire. 

"Still feel like running your mouth?" the agent behind him muttered. 

Significantly more agents had circled Bruce, who had gone still. No guns touched him, though. In fact, there was a radius of clear space around the scientist. 

The first agent stepped aside, leaving the door space clear. "C'mon," he muttered. "We don't have all day." 

If it was possible to be prodded without being touched, Tony was seeing it as Bruce was… herded seemed to be the only word, out of the cell and into the hallway. 

"Move it," an agent grunted to Tony. She jabbed with her gun to emphasize. Tony didn't need the emphasis. In fact, he was rethinking his plan. Being moved had not factored into it. 

However, because he was not in the Iron Man suit, and regular human bodies were very easy to turn to Swiss cheese when unprotected, and he did have a gun to his back--several, really--Tony moved forward. 

The door swung shut once the last of the agents were out. The view of the hallway really wasn't much more informative from this side: long, white-and-gray-tiled, and completely empty except for more doors farther down. 

Tony snuck a look at Bruce, who was pale and looked like he was trying not to move. Not good for the plan not good for the plan that is if he even had a plan or if the reporters were right and the combination of stress and trauma and genius (maybe they'd never said the last one) was finally cracking him but even so NOT GOOD FOR THE PLAN...

... how was this going to work? 

"Where are we taking them?" one of the agents asked. "Both of the reinforced containment rooms are--"

"--occupied, I know," said the first agent. He studied Tony and Bruce with an appraising eye, and Tony felt a chill like a night in a desert cave. "We're taking them to Research."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Also, stay safe, everybody! 
> 
> *.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*


	8. Clickity Click and Zappity Zap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha lets Clint in on her suspicions about Loki, while Tony and Bruce discover what's in store for them at the mysterious "Research."

Clint didn't bother to knock. 

Knocking was pretty pointless, anyway, considering that this wasn't someone's office but was perfectly accessible to basically anyone. Why was he wondering about knocking, anyway? 

I spend too much time with Phil, he thought.

As he stepped into the room, which was medium-sized and lined with computer terminals, only three of which were being used, he spotted a familiar head of red hair. 

Without even turning around, Natasha said, "Hey, Clint." Her voice was distant, and she was staring at a computer screen. Next to her on the table was a stack of riffled-through files, cast aside like last night’s pizza coupon.

"Hey." Clint pulled over an unused chair from another desk, turned it backward, and sat down with his arms draped over the backrest. 

"Thor say anything else after I left?" Her mouse clicked rapidly through page after page.

"Just more stuff about 'release me or face my mighty wrath, foolish mortals,'" Clint said, deepening his voice slightly in his best thunder god impression. "Dude needs to chill." 

"Mmhm." 

Click. Click. Click. 

Clint tapped his fingers against the back of the chair before deciding to get it over with. "So why're you so interested in Loki?" 

That at least got her attention. Her hand slowed infinitesimally atop the mouse. "I think S.H.I.E.L.D. is underestimating him, and I think that's dangerous." 

"You haven't even met him." 

"Exactly." Natasha turned to face him. "Have you?" 

"You know I haven't--"

"How about Phil? Maria? Anybody?" 

Clint didn't answer. That was enough for her. 

"None of our best people have been sent in to Loki. Not to secure the cell, not to interrogate him, nothing. He's apparently just hanging out in his cell--which is who knows where, by the way--with a few guards. Don't you think that's suspicious?" Natasha's hands went flying over the keyboard again, then back to the mouse. "And his file's practically empty, just stuff from New Mexico." 

"He and Thor did only just get here last night," Clint pointed out, but a pit was forming in his stomach at Nat's words. She was right. This was in no way the normal protocol for a new recruit, especially one as supposedly powerful as Loki. Face it, the average dude who got dunked in some radioactive slime wasn’t exactly on the same level as a literal god.

Or at least a preternaturally gifted alien, since Clint wasn’t really in the business of believing people’s claims of divinity.

Natasha clicked on a new tab and angled the screen toward him. She'd bypassed several password requirements and I.D. checks to bring up Thor's file.

Clint leaned in to read it, his head nearly brushing Natasha's. It was lengthy… he skimmed until he found it.

“Recruit has been located and brought into containment.”

Silently, Natasha clicked through several more password screens to Loki's file. It was much shorter, and unlike Thor's, had no pictures. 

He scanned his eyes down the page.

“Subject has never been to Earth.”

Natasha met his eyes as he looked slowly up from the computer screen. 

"Now do you see why I'm so interested?" 

__

Tony was not allowed to talk on the way to "Research." 

The agents had made that quite clear. By jabbing him. Repeatedly. In the back. With their guns. Whenever he so much as opened his mouth.

Tony had decided that it was in his best personal interest to keep his mouth closed.

And so he did, the entire rest of the way down the long, empty, each-corner-was-a-perfect-ninety-degree-angle hallway to "Research." 

"Research" was in quotation marks because no one had bothered to explain exactly what that meant. He could guess that the things being researched were him and Bruce, which… sort of made sense but in other ways sort of didn't… but the how and why were still unclear. 

The when and where, though, became very obvious once they reached a large reinforced door and stopped walking. Or, at least, the agents stopped walking, which meant that Tony had to stop too or introduce a thick piece of metal to his spine. An agent stepped forward and inserted a card into a slot. Click. Beep. Yellow light. The door swung open and Tony and Bruce were shoved inside. Well, Tony was shoved. The agents still didn't seem to want to get too near Bruce, even though whatever he had been drugged with was still fogging up his capacities. 

So this is the mysterious "Research," Tony thought as he looked around. 

The room was cavernous, yet almost completely empty. Everything was a sterilized white color, and it would have been reminiscent of a doctor's office if not for the machines everywhere that were meant for something much, much, bigger than your average patient. Plus, the average patient doesn’t expect to get locked in place, electrically shocked, or injected with needles that looked like zookeepers used them on their rhinos during their check-up.

"This is them?" An unfamiliar voice.

Tony turned--slowly, still mindful of the gun to his back--to see a new person behind them. His white lab coat had made him hard to see at first in this monochromatic place. 

"Yes," said the agent who had done most of the talking. He pointed to Bruce. "It hasn't worn off that one yet." 

"Fascinating," the lab coat man murmured. "It wore off the other recruit much quicker… but then again it also took effect sooner…" His eyes were very round and beady, like a lizard's, and he fixed them on Bruce. "Anyway. The director said to proceed?" 

The agent nodded. "When you're done here, there are some other recruits to ana--"

"Yes, yes, I know," The lab coat man flapped his hand. "Let's get going, then." 

Tony was grabbed at the arms by two agents and yanked over to a metal chair. 

"Can't you people think of a better way of doing this?" he asked as he was shoved down into the chair. "I don't know what you want from me, but--" 

"Iron Man." 

Restraints clicked around his wrists, locking him in place. The agents stepped back from the chair.

"Speaking," Tony said.

"Please don't try to play dumb with us, Stark," the man in the lab coat said. "We want to know where the Iron Man suit is, and any others you have made." 

They didn't already have it? Tony mentally applauded JARVIS.

"You didn't have to go to all this trouble for that, you know," Tony drawled. "You could've just asked." 

"And you didn't have to reveal your identity on national television," the lab coat man said breezily. "Sometimes the easiest path isn't meant to be." He adjusted a slim metal object on a tray in front of him. "This, however, should be easy enough to understand: where is the Iron Man suit?" 

Tony swallowed. This room was reminding him less and less of a doctor's office and more of a certain cave. "What makes you think I'd tell you?" 

"Of course, Stark is a businessman," the man in the lab coat continued, now addressing the agent who'd seemed to be in charge. " He needs to be shown proper motivation. Shall we?" 

"Certainly," the agent replied. The wall of black suits blocking Tony's vision parted, revealing an aspect of the research room he hadn't noticed before. 

Dominating the opposite wall was a huge… the only word to describe it was cage, but what could possibly be so big as to warrant a cage like that, and why were they…

And then Tony's eyes fell upon the inside of the cage, or more specifically, the man who was now trapped there. 

When Bruce caught sight of Tony, his eyes widened and he tried to say something. The walls of the cage were apparently soundproof, though, and he was stuck mouthing silently like a fish in a bowl. Whatever they had drugged him with seemed to have worn off, but not much good that'd do now. 

"And why should I care about that?" Tony forced out, trying to act as nonchalant as possible. 

"Oh, no reason." The man in the lab coat hummed to himself. "We simply expected that after Yinsen, you wouldn't want to see someone else--" 

"Yinsen was my friend," Tony said through gritted teeth. He'd been able to stay calm until they'd said his name, those-- "I don't even know this guy." 

"You knew enough to supply the military with weapons to use against him." The man shrugged. "Another man might feel guilt, but I suppose Tony Stark--" 

"I don't know what you're talking about," Tony interrupted. 

"Of course you don't. Our mistake." The man's voice was serene as he reached out to press a small button on what looked like a control panel in front of the cage. 

Electricity surged through the cage, arcing off the walls and sending a jolt through Bruce, who stumbled back against the wall. It was over before Tony had the chance to say anything.

The man pressed the button again. Bruce shut his eyes, screaming behind a wall of soundproof glass. 

Gone.

Press.

More shocks. 

Bruce's eyes snapped open again, but this time they were glowing poisonous green. Radiation green. The color was beginning to flush through the rest of his skin as well, muscles seizing up and contorting into--

Gone.

Pre--

"Stop it." 

The words were torn from Tony's mouth before he entirely knew what he was saying. 

"What was that?" The man's finger hovered over the button, lowering, lowering…

"I said stop it!" Tony was sitting bolt upright in his chair, hands clenched against the restraints. 

The man in the lab coat took his hand away. "Good." 

Inside the cage, Bruce was slowly crumpling to his knees, breathing heavily as his skin settled to its normal color. 

Tony's gaze was ripped away from him as the man in the lab coat took a step forward, looking him in the eye.

"So," he said, as the agents gathered around, "Where is the Iron Man suit, Tony Stark?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, everybody!
> 
> Given the current situation, I'll probably have a lot more time to work on updates, and probably a lot of you will have more time to read updates :)
> 
> I know a lot of things are awful and crazy right now, but I just want to say that I hope all of you stay safe!


	9. This is a Bad Design

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor discovers the inferior designs of Earth prisons. Steve gets a blast from the past.

Finally, they had left Thor alone.

The interrogation, as the man in the eye patch had called it, had lasted what seemed an endless amount of time. They had questioned him about his hammer (No, he did not know where it was), about Asgard (Did these mortals not understand the concept of outer space?), and about how he had gotten there ("You put me in this cage" was not an acceptable answer, but apparently neither was "I fell off the Bifrost" so Thor wasn't sure what they wanted). 

Strangely enough, there were no questions about Loki. Perhaps his brother was being subjected to his own interrogation, wherever he was being held. 

If S.H.I.E.L.D. thinks I am difficult, they had better prepare themselves for him, he thought with grim amusement that was quickly replaced by worry as he remembered how little the agents had seemed to take Loki seriously. 

All except for one. The woman all in black, with the red hair. She'd convinced the eye patch man--the other agents had called him "Director," and between that title of authority, the eye patch, and the attitude, Thor was wondering if he was Earth's version of his father--to let her go assess Loki herself. 

But one person, no matter how determined, couldn't stop Loki alone. Many, many, many, many, many years had taught Thor that much. Loki would find a way to escape. 

Well, the two of us may not be related by blood, but we do have one thing in common, Thor thought as he looked over the walls of his cage. 

Two things, really. 

One: neither of them should be underestimated. 

Thor backed up. With his eyes on the blinking device that was no doubt monitoring his every move, he charged forward, forcing his full strength against the side of the cage. And that was a lot of strength, if he did say so himself.

It shattered with a CRASH that sparked several wailing alarms. Thor stepped out of his newly created hole. He was out.

Two: both of them would find a way to escape. 

\---

Steve was still in his cell when the alarms went off. 

With a clattering of chains, he struggled upward--he couldn't really stand, but he could pull up into a semblance of a crouch--and leaned as far as he could toward the door. 

The door had been closed for a while, the last person he'd seen being the red-haired woman. And of course he was too far away to reach it.

Which was why it was distinctly unexpected for the door to swing open. 

Steve squinted in the sudden light, making out the dark silhouettes of guards in the doorway.

There were five of them; three holding the door open, one holding a gun, and one who lifted a hand to his ear upon seeing Steve. 

"Recruit is secure," the guard said, apparently talking through a communication device. "That's all on this floor." 

The alarms were still going off; Steve couldn't hear the next words. He pulled on the chains, but they still refused to give any further. If these alarms were fire alarms, or anything like that, these guards had better be planning to let him out. He wasn't sure how valuable he was to them... wasn't it more likely that he was more valuable as a prisoner than dead? That had been the whole point of the super soldier program, after all...

Hold up, he reminded himself. Don't jump to conclusions before you know what's going on.

The only problem was, he didn't know what was going on.

"What's going on?" he tried. One of the guards cast a quick look at him, but none of them said anything.

Suddenly, the guard with the earpiece jolted upright. "What do you mean, not exactly?" 

"Agent?" one of the other guards asked in a low rumble. "Is there a problem?" 

The first guard pressed the earpiece again before swearing. "Just close the door again--" 

He stopped. Steve knew why. Even through the still-screeching alarms, he could hear the footsteps approaching.

I guess this floor isn't empty after all, he thought.

Was it more guards, or… could it be… 

The footsteps came closer and closer. Finally, they stopped in front of the other guards. In front of Steve's door.

The silence--at least human silence, those alarms were still going at it--broke. 

"Is there an explanation?" 

"What are you doing on this floor?" 

The guard who'd been talking into a communication device and one of the new arrivals spoke at the same time. 

The new arrivals were just visible at the edge of the doorway, black-clad and gun-bearing… yup, it was more guards. But wait a second…

"Transporting recruits," the new guard finally answered. He gestured behind him, to the only two men in the group of new arrivals who were not dressed as guards. In fact, they were dressed like Steve.

Like prisoners. 

"This floor was supposed to be cleared--" the earpiece agent started.

Steve couldn't stop staring at the two of them. More. There were more. He wasn’t alone in here--these people could have Peggy--or Howard-- 

"The orders were--" The new guard kept talking. 

Actually… 

One of those men did look quite a bit like Howard. Steve blinked. Yep. Dark hair, facial structure, I'm-clearly-the-most-important-one-here aura. But at the same time, he didn't look like Howard.

This was very weird.

Both guards continued to talk over each other. "A recruit escaped, orders were to secure all the others--" 

The other man, shorter than the Weird Howard-Look-Alike and with several of the new guards' guns pointed at him, was not at all familiar to Steve. But he was the one who noticed him first. 

Confusion. Recognition. Actual jaw drop--who actually did that? Then what seemed to be a series of attempts to get the look-alike man to also notice Steve just by flicking his eyes. This did not work. 

"This floor--" 

Several coughs and a head jerk later, the look-alike man finally turned away from the two guards and landed his eyes on Steve. 

His face didn't go through quite the same array of expressions. More like surprise that flattened straight into why-should-I-care.

"Who are you?" Steve said quietly, hoping the two of them would at least be able to read his lips. 

"Hey!" One of the guards jumped up from their position against the door. "You stay put!" 

Steve hadn't been trying to go anywhere, but the shout alerted the two guards who'd been discussing with each other, who immediately stopped and began issuing orders to the rest of the squad. 

"Get that door closed," the one with the earpiece was saying. He shot a suspicious glance into the cell at Steve.

The new guard was focused on the other two prisoners. "Keep the recruits in line! We're taking them back to confinement." 

As he was shoved into position, it looked like the look-alike man rolled his eyes. 

Three of the guards began to pull the thick door closed. Light from the hallway rapidly started to be eaten up, leaving only a sliver that was getting smaller and smaller…

"Wait!" Steve called. This could be his only chance to communicate with other prisoners! He just needed--a little--more time--!

He saw the backs of the guards forcing the two men forward down the hallway just before the door shut completely and he was left in darkness.

The alarms still wailed, more muffled this time, and Steve slowly dragged back to the wall, leaning against it with chains clinking. 

Alone again. Who knew for how long. 

He laid his head back against the cold cement. There were entirely new things to process now. 

Whatever this place was, they weren't only interested in Hydra. Or Captain America, or the military, or whatever it was he was supposed to be interrogated about. Because he knew a soldier when he saw one, and neither of those men had fit the bill. 

This place wanted something else. 

It's bigger than just three prisoners, too… they mentioned another "recruit," one who escaped.

Steve smirked to himself. At least he knew it was possible. 

But in the cold emptiness of the cell, that possibility felt farther and farther away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	10. The Obligatory Cameo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pepper makes some connections while Thor's escape plan goes sideways.

Pepper stepped out of her car, squinting into the early dawn sunlight and consequently almost hitting an old man with the car door.

"Oh my goodness! So sorry!" 

The old man simply adjusted his glasses. "Far from the worst thing that's happened to me this morning," he said in an oddly cheerful way, continuing down the sidewalk. 

Pepper watched him walk away, then shut the car door. 

I'm so focused on finding Tony, I'm forgetting to be careful, she thought. 

And she'd definitely have to change that. Couldn't have her knocking down elderly pedestrians just because she was distracted.

"So where exactly are we?" came Happy's voice from behind her. He and Rhodey had just gotten out of their respective cars (Pepper had vetoed the use of the suit, even if it would have been a lot faster) and were staring up at a tall, mirrored, building with a fancy, tech-like logo on the side. 

The city was full of buildings like this, most of them bank buildings or important companies. This one, however, was a rather impressive scientific lab. 

Pepper glanced down at the business card in her hand. "It's one of the places where S.H.I.E.L.D. keeps an eye on people." 

"S.H.I.E.L.D. 'keeps an eye' on the whole world and certain parts of outer space," Rhodey said, stepping up onto the sidewalk. He was still in the clothes he'd been wearing at the press conference. "You're going to have to be more specific." 

Considering that the first time Rhodey had heard of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s existence was last night when Pepper had spilled everything about the business card and her encounter with Agent Coulson over the phone, he had picked it up fast, even managing to get information through his government contacts. Pepper was just glad he was here. 

"Right." Pepper started to walk up to the building, the two men following behind her. Her high heels clicked on the sidewalk. "After I got off the phone with you two, I started looking into anything I could find that might help us, and I found some accounts from a small town in New Mexico that gave me reason to think that Coulson and more of S.H.I.E.L.D. had shown up there." 

"How does that help us, though?" Rhodey pushed open one of the double doors and a whoosh of air conditioning greeted them.

"Because--" Pepper began, but Happy shushed her. 

The inside of the building could have been a lobby in almost any business: nondescript gray carpeting, elevators against the back wall, and a long desk in the middle with a forlorn-looking potted plant atop it.

It was also nearly empty besides the person behind the desk. The three of them approached, freezing talk of S.H.I.E.L.D. for later. 

The person behind the desk, a woman with a short bobbed haircut, didn't look up from her computer screen as they reached the desk. Up close, Pepper could see that the potted plant was actually fake. 

She cleared her throat. 

"How-can-I-help-you-" the woman began, mechanically, but then she looked up from her screen. Her eyes widened as she took in the faces before her. 

"I've seen you on TV," the woman stammered. She looked at Rhodey. "With Tony Stark. You were at that conference when he did the whole I-am-Iron-Man thing and… sorry." The woman visibly composed herself. 

"Yes, we're from Stark Industries," Pepper said brightly. She gestured around the room. "We've taken an interest in your labs, and we're supposed to be meeting with one of your scientists, in, oh, what was it, Happy?" 

Happy looked confused, but fortunately Rhodey was quick to catch on. He made a show of looking at his watch. "Fifteen minutes, Miss Potts." 

"Thank you." Pepper smiled at the woman behind the desk. "So you see we should really get up there." 

She waited, tense. Please work please work please work--

"Of course," the woman said. "I just need to make a call to notify… what department is this scientist?" 

"Astrophysics." 

The woman nodded and waved them toward the elevators. "Fifth floor." 

"Thanks so much," Pepper said, already heading over to the elevators. As soon as they were out of the woman's peripheral vision, she dropped her business smile. Happy pressed the button and the door slid open. 

It was one of those elevators that, for no reason Pepper could fathom, had a grimy mirror entirely covering one wall. At least it didn't play music. 

Once the button for floor five lit up, the elevator shuddered and jolted upwards. 

Happy broke the silence. "Astrophysics?"

Pepper took a deep breath. This was going to take a lot of oxygen. "The thing that happened in New Mexico--don't ask me exactly what it was, there are a bunch of conflicting accounts from people who say they were almost killed by a flaming robot or they broke their truck trying to pull a hammer out of the ground--probably not true, but anyway, one thing most of the witnesses claim is that there was some kind of government agency that made base just outside of the town and confiscated the property of one of the residents." 

She looked at the two of them. "The government agency was S.H.I.E.L.D., one of the agents was Coulson, and the resident was Dr Foster, an astrophysicist who was relocated here--I'm guessing by S.H.I.E.L.D.--after the event." 

"So this Dr Foster is in contact with S.H.I.E.L.D." Rhodey said. It wasn't a question, although it was phrased like it. 

"Or at least might know something about where they are," Happy added. 

Pepper nodded. "And if we find S.H.I.E.L.D., we find Tony." 

The elevator dinged as the doors began to exhale open, and the three of them looked out at the fifth floor.

___

Thor was being chased.

Obvious, yes, that his breaking out of his cage would not go unnoticed--particularly because of the loud crash, alarms, and the little blinking recording device that had probably been watching him (he'd have to tell Heimdall about those), not necessarily in that order--but the mortals had found him rather quickly. 

He'd barely gotten ten steps out of the room when what seemed like half of S.H.I.E.L.D. had appeared from the various doorways lining the hallway. 

All were facing him.

All had guns.

So Thor had done the obvious thing and started a dead sprint down the hallway. 

Did he know how to get out? No. He'd been drugged and knocked out when they'd brought him in. But apparently Asgardians could run a lot faster than those on Midgard... Earth… so he was pretty confident he'd find something eventually. 

Thor turned a corner, cape flying behind him. Did all the hallways in this place look the same? 

The footsteps of countless agents pounded behind him. "Stop!" one of them shouted. 

He did consider it. But all things considered, he'd rather not fight his way out. 

He was sworn to protect Earth, and that includes these… conflicting individuals. 

He must find a way out without fighting, that's all. 

Thor rounded another corner, only to be immediately faced by a line of more agents. Once they saw him, the sound of about twenty guns clicking filled the air.

"I had to tempt fate," Thor muttered to himself. He did not stop running. 

Closer… closer…

Still didn't stop. 

He had to give these agents credit, they weren't diving away when faced with a thunder god charging them head-on…

Thor slid to the side near the wall, shoving agents out of the way. Bullets pinged around the hall. Some forwent their guns to try to physically take him down. He pushed them aside too. 

They just kept coming, from both sides now… the ones who had been chasing him had caught up. One after another after another… 

This seems familiar for some reason, he thought absurdly, remembering the night he and Jane had attempted to get his hammer and her work back from S.H.I.E.L.D.

Finally, he fought his way through enough to be able to slip out, dodging the only-unconscious-they'll-be-fine agents on the floor and dashing up a nearby flight of stairs. He had no idea what floor he was on, but it was logical to hold captives underground, the deeper the better. And even if he was somehow higher up, stairs would lead to a roof if nothing else, and Heimdall could--

Wait. Loki. 

Thor slowed to a stop on the circular staircase. Yes, his brother would find a way to escape on his own, if he hadn't already, but the last thing any of them wanted--himself, Odin, even S.H.I.E.L.D.--was Loki loose on Earth. 

He could bring him back to Asgard, and they could make things right again, just as they were before.

All he had to do was find him. 

From the brief image the eye patch man had shown him earlier, Loki was in a cell like his own. This headquarters was a big place, but how many cells of that size could they really have, especially if each was located in a room of equal size? 

He needed to get access to one of their devices. Jane called them… computers? Where one can find information. 

Shouts and footsteps from downstairs were getting louder and louder. The remaining agents were gaining on him.

Well, he supposed there was just as likely to be a computer upstairs than here anyway.

Thor started running again, leaping up multiple stairs at once. This would have been so much better to fly--how could he lose a hammer that always came back to him? Except of course that the last time he'd had his hammer was back on Asgard, and it might take a little longer than normal for it to reach him here.

He reached the top of the stairs. Not the roof yet. Instead, it was yet another identical hallway. Mortals really had no style. 

At least this one was empty. He strode up to the first door and yanked it open. 

File cabinets. Nope.

The next door: some kind of storage. Nope.

The third door: empty. Nope.

The fourth… ah, this was good.

The fourth door opened up to reveal a smallish room, windowless like every other room in this place, and lined with many little desk-like-things with computers on them. Excellent. 

Thor let go of the door handle, stepped inside, took another look around--

"What the hell?" 

\--and found himself staring at two more agents, both seated at one of the computers. 

In fact, he'd seen both of them before. One of them was the man who'd shot him with the tranquilizer dart. The other was the red-haired woman from the cell. 

Both were shocked upon seeing Thor suddenly walk into the room, but already the man was half rising from his seat and the woman was adopting a steely glint in her eye...

"Now," Thor started, holding out his hands. He could hear the agents thundering up the stairs. It wouldn't take them long to get up here. "I am not trying to--" 

Zzzzzzzip.

A small, sharp, and unfortunately familiar something stuck him in the neck. He pulled it out and examined it. It was a dart.

"Not again," was all he managed to say as more zzzzzzzips whistled through the air and stuck in his skin like annoying insects. He staggered under the weight of the tranquilizer coursing through his veins. He didn't even know where they were coming from now.

The world was going blurry again… 

The last thought he had before he sank to his knees was that Loki would have never let him hear the end of it for this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> (Also, did anyone catch it?)


	11. No Hecking Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhodey, Pepper, and Happy meet up with an astrophysicist and her intern to find out more about S.H.I.E.L.D. Meanwhile, Tony and Bruce discuss what they've just seen.

Of all the places Rhodey had expected to go in order to find Tony Stark, this was not one of them. 

The last time he'd been kidnapped, tracking him down had involved a lot of helicopters, working with the rest of the military, and searching through the desert. 

Now they were in an office building. And not a particularly nice one at that. 

Obviously, that's what S.H.I.E.L.D. wants, though… an unobtrusive and out-of-the-way place to "relocate" people like Dr Foster. 

Well, they had succeeded. No one would look for an ultra-secretive government agency in a building where you had to almost push the elevator doors open. 

Rhodey, Pepper, and Happy walked down the hallway of the fifth floor, which was lined with windows on one side so that you could see into some of the lab rooms. He didn't get the feeling that some of them were used too often; quite a few were empty or close to being so. 

In severe contrast to Dr Foster's lab, which all three of them knew when they saw, even without ever meeting the scientist before. 

Through the windows, Rhodey could see a setup that summed up the definition of controlled chaos better than anything else. Foot-high masses of papers were messily stacked atop several desks… but all had clearly been gone through and labeled with small colored Post-it notes. One wall was entirely devoted to photos of glowing dust clouds and a swirling aurora, all neatly tacked on… along with dozens of ripped pieces of notebook paper with scribbled calculations. And of the two people in the room, one was dashing about, checking things on a computer, while the other was lounging in a swivel chair swiping at a phone screen. 

Pepper knocked once. No response. 

She tried again. Still nothing. She raised her hand a third time--

"Hey." 

Fortunately, Rhodey didn't startle that easily, and merely turned his eyes back to the window, where the phone-playing lounger had apparently moved from her spot and was pressed against said window and staring right at them. 

"Hey," he replied. He gestured to the door. "Could you--?" 

The girl--young, with glasses and dark hair--shook her head and pointed to her ear. "Can't hear you through the glass!" she called. 

Her voice was muffled. Still, Rhodey had literally been pointing at the door. Impatiently, he did so again. 

"Ahhh. Gotcha." The girl vanished from sight briefly, hidden behind the door, which finally opened. She only opened it a crack, however, and peeked through at them suspiciously. 

"You guys aren't from S.H.--er, any mysterious agency thing I'm not supposed to talk about, right?" 

"We're from Stark Industries," Pepper said. 

"And you're… not Dr Foster, right?" Happy guessed. The girl laughed.

"Yeah, no kidding. She's in there--" she pointed behind her into the lab "--and I'm Darcy Lewis. But you don't care about that… hey, JANE!" she yelled. 

A muffled "what," quick footsteps, and then the other person who Rhodey had seen through the window was at the door. She was short, with brown hair that had a pencil absentmindedly stuck in it. 

"Hello," said Dr Jane Foster. If she, like the woman downstairs, recognized any of them from the now-famous Iron Man press conference, she didn't show it. Then again, judging by all the piled-up work that spoke of all-nighters, who knew if she'd even seen it. "Can I help you?" 

"We're hoping so," Pepper said, extending a hand. "I'm Pepper Potts." 

"They work for that Tony Stark dude," Darcy whispered to Jane, who shook Pepper's hand. 

"With," Rhodey automatically corrected.

Darcy smirked. "i feel that, dude." 

"Can we come inside, actually?" Pepper continued as though neither Rhodey or Darcy had said anything. "We're here on… sensitive business." 

"What kind of sensitive business?" Jane asked instantly, not budging from the doorway. 

"New Mexico kind of sensitive business," Pepper said without missing a beat. 

There was a pause during which Jane and Darcy shared a look. Finally, Jane opened the door crack a little farther. 

"All right." 

The door was shut again once the three of them were in the lab. It wasn't any less crowded from the inside; Jane shoved aside a stool as she walked past and Happy nearly bumped into a piece of equipment, earning a look from both Pepper and Rhodey. 

Jane didn't notice though, simply leaning her hands back on a paper-piled desk and facing them. "So why would you want to know anything," she began flatly. "You can find what happened online." 

"The official version, yes," Pepper agreed. "But the official version doesn't mention S.H.I.E.L.D." 

"And how do you know about that?" Jane asked swiftly. 

"Wasn't me," Darcy volunteered from her swivel chair. 

Pepper produced a business card from her pocket. As Jane took it and examined it, Rhodey leaned over to look himself. Pepper had told him about it over the phone, but hadn't actually shown it to him. 

The card was simple: S.H.I.E.L.D. in bold black letters. And underneath, handwritten: You'll be hearing from us. 

Jane handed it back. "I'm guessing they kept their promise." 

Pepper nodded. "They kidnapped Tony Stark." 

Remarkably, she managed to keep her voice perfectly smooth as she said that. 

"Again?" came an incredulous voice from the corner.

Jane turned. "Darcy--" 

"What? It's a fair question." Darcy popped up from her chair and strode over to the rest of them. "And what makes you think we'd know how to find him?" 

"Because the man who gave Pepper that card was Agent Coulson," Rhodey said. "I believe you know him. Because you've been to a S.H.I.E.L.D. base before. And because S.H.I.E.L.D. are the ones who set up this nice little lab location." 

Jane bit her lip. "True. But we aren't really in contact with them. The only thing I can think of is…" She trailed off. 

"Yes?" Pepper prompted. 

"Just before S.H.I.E.L.D. brought us here, that Coulson guy explained why they were so interested in Th… the event at New Mexico, and why they were letting me continue my research." 

"Kind of explained," Darcy interrupted. "It was unnecessarily cryptic." 

Jane continued. "He said that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s mission was to keep the world safe, and it was getting harder with all these 'overpowered' threats. I could help them monitor the ones from space--" 

"Space? What exactly happened in New Mexico?" Happy muttered from behind Rhodey. 

"--but there were still many close to home that had to be 'kept in check.'" Jane paused. "And there were files. I wasn't allowed to look at them, but I did glance at a couple. There was a section where they had 'Potential Threats.'" She looked at them. "One said 'Anthony Stark.'" 

Rhodey did the math in his head, based on what he knew of the New Mexico incident. That would have been while Tony was still being held by the Ten Rings. He was considered a threat before Iron Man even existed. 

And somehow I'm not surprised, he thought.

"That's all you know?" Pepper pressed. "No idea what they could be doing, or how to find S.H.I.E.L.D., or--?"

Jane shook her head. "Nothing like that. The only other thing I saw was another file in that section, but I don't know what it was for." 

"What did it say?" Rhodey asked. It was a long shot that this would be in any way useful, but… 

"It was about some kind of project," Jane said. "The EXO-7 Falcon project." 

___

It didn't take long for the agents to lead them back to the cell, prod them inside, and shut the door again, but it felt like forever for Tony's thoughts, which were careening around his mind like crazy.

As soon as the door was closed, he whirled around to Bruce and blurted out, "No way that was Captain America." 

Fortunately, Bruce seemed to be on the same wavelength. "At least I know you saw it too," he said, worrying his hands together. "How do you think--"

"--he's alive? Could be a lot of things: cryogenics, the serum… maybe a clone?" Tony speculated. 

He'd have to be almost a hundred years old if he aged naturally… that guy in the cell looked younger than some of Tony's interns. 

"That can't have been a clone," Bruce protested. "And nothing in the serum should have caused abnormal longevity." 

"I know that," Tony acknowledged, and because he couldn't help it, added: "And I know how you know that, but we're not going to talk about that right now because we have an actual important priority." 

Bruce looked taken aback for a moment. "Fair enough," he finally said. "So how long do you think they've had him there?" 

"Probably not that long--the chains looked new. But how long does he think it's been? Since the crash, anyway?" This left two possible options: the captain thought it was still the forties, or he was confused out of his mind.

Well, that might be the case regardless. 

"Did they just find him in the Arctic and bring him straight here?" he continued, now pacing around the room. "And I'm honestly curious: was he already unfrozen or did they just drag an ice cube three thousand miles?" 

"What do you think they're planning to do with him?" Bruce wondered aloud, possibly not having heard Tony's last sentence. 

"Same as us," Tony shrugged. "This place appears to have a superhero-hoarding obsession." 

The words were just that--words, but they made him actually stop for a moment and consider. It was the first time he had thought of Iron Man as being comparable to Captain America. As though it was natural to use the same word to describe them. 

Superheroes. The words may have flowed out easily, but… somehow that word only applied to stories like Captain America, that were one hundred percent dedicated and sure of themselves and, yes, this is what a hero is. History books and museum exhibits and stories told at night. Everyone doing the telling sure, without a doubt, that this was someone worth calling a superhero. 

Iron Man didn't seem to fit that. Not to him. 

I'm not on the same level, he couldn't help but think.

Bruce seemed to be thinking along similar lines, only about himself. Rather than voicing those thoughts aloud, though, what he said was "Then we need to get out of here."

Tony snapped out of his internal musing. "Look, not that escape plans aren't always on the back of my mind, but what exactly prompted that, while we were, in fact, talking about Captain America and not escape plans." 

"Not ESCAPE PLANS escape plans." 

"Just escaping this cell, to go find Captain America's cell, to proceed to the actual escape plans," Tony guessed. Bruce nodded, looking only mildly surprised that he hadn't had to explain himself. "Excellent." 

Now was the hard part: actually getting out of the cell. Based on what Tony had seen in the Research room, this cell would be one of the most heavily fortified. Not easy to break out of. 

And not only that--but break out of without triggering any of the alarms that had gone off during whatever fiasco had happened earlier (Whatever that had been about, he was just glad it'd saved him from the awful Research room situation… at least briefly). 

Tony appraised the door in front of him, already mentally planning. He'd tried a dozen and a half escape attempts when he'd first woken up here… but obviously none had worked. He'd had nothing… no supplies, no tech, not even a nice background playlist. 

Now, though, he had help. Possibly help of the large and green variety if he could do some convincing… 

Not easy to break out of… but not impossible, either.

Their captors just might have bargained wrong by putting two geniuses together in a cell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> (Pardon me as I write the 10000th Tony and Bruce chapter haha)


	12. Flying and Falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flying billionaire-class is a new experience for Darcy, one that's only a little ruined by the impending mission to find the last member of the EXO-7 FALCON project. Back at S.H.I.E.L.D., Natasha's hunch is rewarded... or is it?

"I'm still kind of annoyed we didn't get to ride here in a limo," Darcy Lewis remarked as she slid into the seat beside Jane. "But this almost makes up for it." 

Jane didn't answer, which wasn't surprising. She'd mostly been in a state of nervous excitement ever since this had arrived. 

"This" happened to be one of Stark's planes (seriously, having your own plane was absolutely goals) which Pepper Potts—the tall, strawberry-blond-haired lady—had somehow managed to charter from the lab after they'd found out everything they could about the EXO-7 FALCON. Which was supposed to be confidential but apparently one of the guys (Road-y? Rodie? Rhodey?) had friends in high places. 

What they'd found out was that EXO-7 FALCON was in fact a kind of high-tech weaponry used by the American military that had been in its testing phase in Afghanistan a few years ago before being shut down by—surprise, surprise—S.H.I.E.L.D.

What was it, exactly? Nobody knew, or nobody was willing to tell them. Road-y/Rodie/Rhodey's friends weren't quite that high up. 

Out of the two people who had ever used the FALCON technology, one was dead and the other had been retired from the Air Force and "encouraged" by S.H.I.E.L.D. to keep silent on the topic. 

So of course that's who they were going to see. 

After a bit more finagling over the phone, they'd gotten an address for the man in Washington D.C. Which was great, yes, just great, but also... just a little bit of a long drive from California. Thankfully, the drive was only the distance to the nearest airport—Darcy having been sadly deprived of getting to ride in the fancy Stark limo, instead relegated to the passenger seat of Jane's old SUV—and the rest of the distance could be covered by the plane. 

And she and Jane were completely ditching work for this. Which was both crazy and kind of typical at the same time. 

Jane had always been kind of a free spirit in that way—not really caring about anything besides the thing she was focused on at that particular moment. Possible death by driving into a tornado? It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see an aurora. Breaking into a super-spy facility? Have to get the research back. Stuff like that. In this case, Darcy suspected that Jane wanted more from S.H.I.E.L.D. as well… maybe concerning a certain blond, hammer-wielding, thunder god. 

And lucky her… she got to come along for the ride. 

Darcy leaned back in her smooth black seat, which was about a hundred times more comfortable than her (admittedly few) other airplane experiences, and gazed out the window at the chalk-blue sky. 

Coming along for the ride was definitely a plus. 

The plane's takeoff was a few minutes later, and before long they were cruising across the sky. 

It was oddly silent inside the plane, considering how much explaining and convincing and occasional patience-losing all of them had done while on the phone and on the way to the airport. All the seats faced other seats, but their occupants were not doing the same. 

Jane looked like she was calculating in her head. The military dude whose name Darcy hadn't quite caught was staring rigidly out the window. The other dude's head was lolling onto the backrest, half asleep. And Pepper Potts was frowning at her phone. 

"Weird," she muttered, swiping a finger across the screen. 

Darcy had a brief internal debate about rudeness before giving up and saying, "What's weird? Is it about the falcon man?" 

Yes, she was disappointed that a secretive thing called EXO-7 FALCON didn't involve any actual birds, and yes, she was going to refer to the guy they were about to see as the falcon man because of this disappointment. 

Pepper shook her head. "It's just the news… some people are claiming they saw a man fall out of the sky during last night's rainstorm." 

That shook Jane out of her daze. "What?" 

"That's basically the whole story," Pepper shrugged, giving a confused look to Jane. "No photos or anything, just some conspiracy theorists." 

"Does it say anything else about him?" Jane asked, ignoring her. "Like, was he wearing… anything weird?" 

"Did they say if he was totally shredded?" Darcy suggested. 

Pepper set down her phone and steepled her fingers. "No, it does not say anything like that, but judging from the levels of specific you two just reached, you've seen something like that before." She didn't wait for either Jane or Darcy to answer. "Care to tell?" 

Darcy looked at Jane. "Are we allowed to tell?" 

Jane sighed and shifted in her seat. "We've already done practically every single thing S.H.I.E.L.D. told us not to do, I don't think it matters anymore." 

"So this would be about what happened in New Mexico," the military guy—he'd said his name was James Rhodes, the nickname Darcy kept mishearing had to be Rhodey, right?—spoke up, his voice dry as the desert they were flying over. 

"It would," Jane confirmed. In the seat across, the other guy—Darcy had heard one of the others call him Happy but what kind of a name was that?—made a snorting noise in his sleep. "It's kind of a long story, though." 

"Full of aliens," Darcy added airily. Pepper's eyes went wide but she didn't say anything. 

"Well, the flight's going to last about five hours," Rhodey said. "You won't be looking for time." 

"Here goes, then." With both Rhodey and Pepper listening intently, Jane started to talk. She began with the night that she, Darcy, and Erik Selvig had first met Thor. Occasionally Darcy would drop in to say things like "that's when I tased him" or "and my iPod!" 

All the while, the plane was flying closer and closer to Washington D.C… and hopefully, to answers. 

___

Natasha woke up right on schedule, reaching out and flicking on the lamp beside her bed. The sudden brightness in the formerly dark room caused her to squint, but it did the job of making her feel more awake. 

Although she was inside, in a room with no windows, she could tell that it was morning. It was a skill that had been trained into her like everything else. Like waking up when you didn't want to. 

True to form, she sat up, kicking off the plain S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued covers and swinging out of bed. Sleeping the whole night just wasn't a thing that happened now. She had some very important things to do, and didn't need that much sleep anyway. 

Although some coffee would be excellent. 

After a few minutes of locating her shoes and other getting-ready-type things, she stepped into the hall and locked the door. 

The dormitories at headquarters weren't really meant to be permanent living spaces—most of the agents had safe houses or even regular houses with families… to say nothing of the odd secret farm—but Natasha had never really felt like she could live anywhere else. It would be almost like pretending her entire life wasn't tied to S.H.I.E.L.D. now. 

The hallway was empty and the elevator was almost so, with just a few other agents who got on and off while barely giving Natasha more than a brusque "morning." 

She replied in the exact same tone of voice, which was just simple pleasure when they didn't notice. The elevator numbers clicked downward. 

Once Natasha reached the second floor, everything dissolved into a mindless blur of yes-Phil-I-did-the-paperwork-cloudy-73-degree-morning-oh-look-the-cafeteria-has-cranberry-bagels-the-area-around-containment-room-A-has-been-declared-off-limits-understood-yes-good-you-all-can-go. 

Then, finally… it was back to work. 

This particular work was not one that S.H.I.E.L.D. had assigned her. Nick Fury had not authorized it. Phil had not given her files on it (if he had, that would defeat the point… not having files was her whole damn problem). And there was no contingency plan in case the current one went horribly wrong.

Which it very well might, considering that she was planning to sneak into the cell of an alien/possible god. 

Whose brother had already broken out last night, proving that these… individuals… couldn't be hemmed in by S.H.I.E.L.D. security. 

Who no one, apparently, knew anything about, judging by the useless file after useless file. 

Knew about or even cared. Besides Natasha.

Who last night, just before she had gone to sleep after hours spent combing through the computers for any idea of where Loki might be being held, had jolted up with an epiphany. A lightbulb would have appeared over her head if she'd been in one of those cartoons Clint had made her watch. 

She'd previously assumed that Loki would be held in the same area as all the rest of the recruits. After all, there was no real reason why he wouldn't be. That was where all the extra-reinforced containment rooms were, the kind where they put the big threats (Like Thor). 

But she'd forgotten. No one else was actually seeing Loki as a big threat, at least no one who'd been directly involved in his capture (which could have all sorts of terrible implications… wasn't the Loki of Norse mythology considered a trickster?). They wouldn't think it was necessary for him to have the same level of security as Thor. 

So she shouldn't be looking on the main levels. She should be looking somewhere more out of the way… 

And that was when the Natasha of last night had sat bolt upright in her bed. Surely not. 

They couldn't have put him in basement 16.

Basement 16 was sort of a joke among some of the agents, understandable why because its original purpose was to be another series of containment areas for recruits… but it had been constructed with little to no soundproofing, which—combined with the non-secure air systems—made it so that whoever was inside could hear basically all the conversation going on in the hallway and in nearby rooms. Once this was realized, basement 16 was abandoned as an actual containment area. No one in their right mind would put a recruit as powerful as Thor or Loki in there.

Unfortunately, it looked as though that was what had happened. 

And I'm starting to think that some of them really aren't in their right minds, she thought grimly.

She'd thought about telling Clint her suspicions, but ultimately decided against it. He had guard duty at the moment, so it wasn't like he could help. And most of the people who she'd normally confide something this important to—a short, short list—were either also unavailable or already "not in their right minds." Like Fury. 

She'd have to do it alone. 

The elevator ride down to the basement was long and silent. The first sound came when the doors ground open and her shoes clicked out into the deserted hallway. 

Obviously, none of the current records on basement 16 showed Loki at all. She'd have to search the old-fashioned way. Fortunately, this area wasn't too big. 

Natasha methodically checked up and down the halls, looking inside each door—none of the rooms down here had been locked in ages—to make sure it was empty before moving on. 

About twenty-eight minutes later, she came to a door that was locked. A small keypad was attached beside it, probably as old as the rest of this level. 

Natasha examined it for a moment, noting the wear on certain keys, before typing in a passcode. She held her breath.

Beep. Green light. 

She pushed the door open, slowly… slowly… 

Her hunch had been correct. 

In the center of this room was a cell, see-through like Thor's, allowing her to clearly see the tall figure within. His back was to her, so all she could see was his red cape…

Wait. That cape looked familiar.

"Thor?" Natasha said incredulously. 

The man turned around, revealing the armor, blond hair, and features of the so-called thunder god. Before she could even begin to think about why on earth Thor was down here, he spoke. "Hello, Agent Romanoff." 

Spoke in a voice that was definitely not Thor's. 

"Hello, Loki," she replied coolly. 

Not-Thor smirked and allowed the illusion to drop. As it shimmered away, it revealed the green robes and black hair of the image Fury had shown Thor. 

"So the whole 'shapeshifter' thing from the myths is true, then?" Natasha glanced at a monitor set up to her left. Various data blinked on the screen: sound spiking as she spoke, the door settings set to open. 

The infrared screen was the weird part, though… there was only one little red blob of heat—Natasha's own. Loki's heat signature blob was ice blue. Cold.

So these guys really weren’t human. Not that there was any doubt by that point.

"True enough," Loki said. He took a step closer, nearly touching the glass. "But I don't think I'm the only one here using deceit. Do any more of those agents know you're in here?" 

"It's just you and me," Natasha replied, warning signs going off in her head. Careful training kept any of it from showing on her face, however, and she continued lightly. "I was only wondering what you're doing down here instead of keeping your brother company." 

"Worried about me?" 

About S.H.I.E.L.D. "Everyone gets lonely." 

"Ah. Well—" Loki paced to the other side of his cell. Natasha watched him warily. "—there's no need to worry..." 

He stopped moving—

—then turned around, quick as a flash. 

"...I'm exactly where I want to be." 

Natasha felt something—a sharp, pointed, something, jab against her chest and froze.

What was that—what's going on—why did she— feel so— 

Natasha straightened up. Why was she freaking out? It was nothing. Everything was fine. 

Why was she even still here?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	13. If This Was a Musical, Loki's Villain Song Would Go Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki is more dangerous than anyone knew. Fortunately, Jane and the others manage to track down a certain bird-themed superhero to help out.

Loki watched as Agent Romanoff left the room, her face blank. Another small success in his plan. 

He'd have to be careful not to do too many of them, though, or other agents would start to notice… in fact, Romanoff had noticed. 

It was true what he'd said to her, though. There was no need to worry. None of these mortals posed a threat.

The illusion he'd put up for Romanoff melted away, revealing the glowing scepter in his hand.

Loki grinned. None of them would even see it coming. 

___

"This is it?" 

Jane Foster nodded, looking down at her phone, currently displaying Google Maps. She'd been to quite a few different places, especially recently, but Washington D.C. had never been one of them. It was a nice place. She should come back when they were done—

"Jane?" 

"I said yes, Darcy." 

"No you didn't." 

"Well, I nodded. Same thing." 

Beside them, Pepper cleared her throat meaningfully. Irritating, maybe, but Jane got the point. 

The plane ride had, as Colonel Rhodes (Calling him Rhodey just seemed too familiar) predicted, lasted about five hours. Add in the time spent leaving the airport and getting here, and it was a little after dinnertime. Or it would have been if not for the whole time zone thing. 

They wouldn't be there long, though; no need to worry about getting adjusted. If all went according to plan, they should be in and out with the information they needed. If all went according to plan.

Because that always happened.

Now the five of them stood on the sidewalk on a quiet suburban street, facing one of the houses. Around them, leaves tumbleweeded into the road. A dog barked across the street. A typical setting. No one would think that S.H.I.E.L.D. would involve itself here. 

"We should probably ring the doorbell before this starts getting creepy," Jane decided, starting to walk up to the door. 

"Yes," Darcy agreed emphatically, matching Jane's stride before jumping forward a little and pressing the doorbell. Diiiiiiiing. 

No answer. 

Rhodes leaned over to Pepper, a skeptical look on his face. "Doesn't this man work?"

Jane frowned. If they had come at the wrong time…

But Pepper was shaking her head. "He volunteers at the VA, but it's Saturday. Plus, there's a car in the driveway, and he lives alone." 

They all waited a few more minutes before Darcy impatiently rang again. 

Still no answer. 

Darcy shrugged and took a step back from the door. "I hope you guys have a plan B." 

Pepper, Rhodes, and Happy started discussing quietly. There was a lot of hand motions and exasperation going on, and it didn't look like anything too productive was happening. Darcy just awkwardly stood to the side. 

Well, if she had to do everything herself— 

Jane felt her determined face slide on as she practically marched up to the door and pressed the doorbell again. 

I didn't fly all the way from California so that this guy wouldn't answer his door, she reminded herself, absently hopping from one foot to the other. This was the closest she'd gotten to... New Mexico stuff... in what felt like forever. Sure, S.H.I.E.L.D. had set her up with a nice office and a bunch of supposedly important work, but she suspected that those things were mostly just to shut her up than use her as an actual asset. At least the insurance was pretty good.

Finally, she could hear footsteps from the inside. The knob clicked, and the door swung open, forcing Jane to move out of the way. 

The man who had opened the door took a sweeping look at all of them. "No." 

He started to close the door again.

"Wait." Pepper hurried so that she was standing between Jane and Darcy. "We're sorry to bother you, Mr Wilson, but we need your help. It's—" a small crack in her polished business face "—it could be life or death." 

"It concerns S.H.I.E.L.D.," Rhodes added. The man's gaze shifted to him. Jane remembered that he had been in the military… maybe Rhodes was the one he would be most likely to trust.

"If you're from S.H.I.E.L.D., I don't think they'd be happy that you're talking about it to a civilian," the man said, keeping his face blank. "Can't help you—" 

"Does every civilian have a piece of FALCON technology in their closet?" 

The man appraised Rhodes carefully. "If you talk to S.H.I.E.L.D., they'll tell you that all the technology was destroyed." 

"S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't always do everything right. As I'm sure you know. And we need that." Rhodes paused. "Our friend was taken by S.H.I.E.L.D. Someone who's had experience with them can help us find him." 

Silence.

All the tension in the world seemed to be stretched into that silence. Jane felt anxious enough, and she didn't even know Tony Stark. Although, yeah, if she was being honest, the billionaire wasn't exactly her primary objective for being here. Sure, she hoped the guy was all right, but if finding him also happened to mean that she found out what S.H.i.E.L.D. was hiding from her about Thor... well, wouldn't that be a win-win? 

"Please," Pepper added. She looked like she hadn't entirely meant to say it, but it had slipped out. "Mr Wilson—" 

"All right." 

Blink. 

"I haven't been in contact with S.H.I.E.L.D., but you're right, I do know more about them than the average person." He nodded at the neighbors' houses around them. "I can help you find your friend, but we're gonna have to take this inside." 

Relieved smiles broke over their faces as he stepped away from the door, holding it open. 

"Thank you so much, Mr Wilson—" Pepper started.

The man shrugged in a "what the heck?" motion. "Sam is fine." 

Jane followed the others into the house. It looked like they might be able to get somewhere after all. They might be able to actually make a plan.

Even if one of the steps in that plan would inevitably have to be "antagonize one of the most powerful agencies in the world."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	14. That, I Do Need To Fix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Desperate times call for extremely desperate measures as Tony and Bruce turn to a last resort for an escape attempt. Clint notices that Natasha is acting a little... off.

Tony had been staring at the cell door for hours. 

Hours, and he had accomplished essentially nothing. The door locked and unlocked from the outside (obviously… it was a cell) and instead of a lock and key, or keypad, or retinal scan, or anything any self-respecting cell should have, it had a huge piece of metal that slid onto the handles on the door and wall to keep it shut. Impossible to open from the inside.

Tony was exhausted, and thirsty, and… well, he could list off a million more discomforts, but he'd just sound like an old lady. 

"You've been staring at the cell door for hours." Bruce's voice came from behind him.

"Yeah, funnily enough, I knew that," Tony said. His voice came out a bit more testy than he'd intended and he thought hmm, let's maybe not offend the only other human in this place, and changed the subject. "When do they feed us in this place, anyway?" 

"No clue."

"What do you mean? You've been here long enough." Four years if he remembered right. "Longer than me, anyway." 

"True, but there's no way to tell time." Bruce absently tapped his wrist, which was bare where a watch would have been. 

"Oh." Not only was the who-knows-when-we're-getting-food issue disheartening, but Tony had a bad feeling that he wouldn't be able to distract Bruce for too much longer.

True to his prediction, Bruce switched topics. "Anyway, stop trying to change the subject. Don't you think…" He stopped. 

Tony snapped his head toward him. "Don't I think what? Just say it." He waited as Bruce apparently tried to figure out how to phrase it delicately enough. 

"Well… getting out of this cell clearly isn't going to be easy, and—"

"Exactly why we need to think of a plan." 

And he would think of a plan. He could solve anything with enough time and materials. Breaking out of a creepy, yet mildly technologically adept (he hated to admit it), secret-spy building would just take a little more of those, that was all. 

Even so, Bruce plowed on. "But neither of us are getting anywhere, and, you know, when's the last time you slept?" 

Uhh… never mind, not important. "I'm not sleeping in here." 

His cell-mate sighed. "Suit yourself." 

Tony smiled before he could stop himself. "Was that an Iron Man pun?" Wow. He had sunk low. Maybe Bruce had a point about the sleep thing if he was finding that funny. 

Bruce muttered "Tony," but Tony caught the slight mouth quirk. 

"Seriously, though, you were captured before, right?" Tony continued, his tone more serious. "How did you get out?" 

"I was in a completely different place." Bruce dodged the question. "I might as well ask you how you escaped from the Ten Rings." 

It's going to be like this now, huh. Well, he could poke too. "You would already know that if you hadn't fallen asleep during my dramatic retelling…" 

Bruce flushed slightly. "Whatever they drugged me with wore off, I wouldn't do that again."

"Whatever you need to tell yourself." Tony paused. "... so how did you escape?" 

"I think you already know how," Bruce said quietly.

Tony flung out his hands. "Then why can't we try that again?" Come on, Bruce, you're a scientist, you have to realize it's our best option, he thought, as though he could somehow transfer the thoughts to Bruce’s head if he kept thinking them over and over. 

"I'm not doing it." 

Tony frowned. "Yeah, but—" 

"I'm not. Doing it." Bruce seemed to realize how quick his breathing was getting and paused, closing his eyes for a few seconds. "Besides, that would definitely set off all the alarms, we don't want a repeat of last time." 

"What was that about anyway?" Honestly it wasn't hard to figure out, but Tony needed to say something else to convince Bruce he had dropped plan A. 

Bruce shrugged.

"Do you think someone else escaped?" Tony asked, unwilling to let the conversation die. They needed talking, they needed ideas, they needed basically anything besides silence and staring at the oppressive, immovable, door. "They probably did. Bruce, we can't let whoever it was steal our thunder, we've got to think of something!" 

Bruce sighed, "Listen, I want to escape as much as you do, but—" he gestured around the empty room. "—we have literally nothing to work with."

Tony didn't reply for a long time. It was true that there was nothing in the room except for them: no bench or sad metal bed like the kind you saw in cop shows. Whatever clothes they'd been wearing when they were captured had been stripped and taken, replaced with pocketless, buttonless, zipperless, cell wear. They didn't even have shoes, or anything remotely hard. Nothing metal, nothing technological… nothing. Their captors had taken every precaution to make sure they couldn't get out.

Almost every precaution, that is. 

Probably because they thought he'd never risk it. 

Well, have I got some news for you, he thought. Or maybe he wasn’t thinking at all. That wouldn’t be surprising, given the crazy idea that was fleshing itself out right then. 

"...maybe that's not entirely true," Tony said, making up his mind. 

"What?" Bruce looked around to see Tony starting to yank his shirt over his head. "Why—why are you taking your shirt off?" 

"Because they didn't take everything when they kidnapped me." Tony tossed the shirt to the floor, and a second later joined it. He'd need to be in a good position for this.

Bruce's eyes widened as he took in Tony's now-exposed chest. "You're not serious." 

"Hey, you got a better idea?" 

"Won't you die without that thing?" 

And, yeah, that thing was the arc reactor. The one piece of technology their captors hadn't removed, which might now be their one chance for an escape. Its blue glow lit up the dim room, shadows flickering as Tony's hands covered parts of it. 

Twist twist twist ah there we go.

"I'm not going to take the whole thing apart," Tony reassured him."Just some—" yank "unnecessary pieces." 

"An electromagnetic coil isn't unnecessary, Tony—!" 

"Relax, I do this all the time." Bracing himself, Tony made one final twist. Pop.

And now I enter the part where I have three minutes before cardiac arrest. Better make this quick. 

Without the arc reactor, his heart began thumping painfully fast, trying to compensate. He could feel the shrapnel fragments like tiny teeth, and this thing called "breathing" had suddenly gotten very hard…

He tried to stick his fingers inside, but ran into a familiar problem: his hands were slightly too big to fit into the space. Last time, he'd recruited Pepper to help, but now… Bruce seemed cool and all that, but he wasn't crazy about a guy he'd met less than 24 hours ago doing this. 

Man, he missed Pepper.

He had to remind himself: It's not like what I was trying to do last time… I'm not trying to get a wire out. I'm trying to get some other stuff out. 

He was probably down to two minutes now. 

"Tony…" Bruce said uneasily.

"It's fine, it's fine, it's…" Tony detached a few pieces, grabbed the reactor again, and—

—finally put it back in his chest. 

"... fine," he finished, breathing heavily in spite of his words. "See, that wasn't so bad," he continued, more for his own benefit.

"I can't believe you just did that." 

Tony held up the several thin pieces of metal that he'd managed to salvage. The reactor wouldn't run perfectly without them, but it would manage well enough until he could fix it. 

"I think it was worth it, though, don't you? Now we can get to that 'escaping' thing." 

___

It was almost seven-thirty P.M., and Clint was regretting not getting coffee that morning. 

He'd stayed at headquarters last night, obviously, there to tranquilizer-dart muscular alien escapees, and hadn't actually gone home since (which could mean any number of things, from the farm to one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s various safe houses to one of his and Natasha's various safe houses… god, it was hard to keep track sometimes). Which meant the only coffee he'd had access to was the highly questionable glop they had in the S.H.I.E.L.D. cafeteria. 

So Clint had made the (he thought) life-preserving decision, and opted to go straight to work.

Hey, he hadn't known that he'd be stuck on guard duty for this long. If he had, he might have given in and gotten the cafeteria coffee. Or attempted to get more than two hours of sleep. 

Too late now. 

Clint scrubbed a hand over his eyes and started another sweep down the hallway. It was deserted except for him, just as it had been for the past all day. Shocking.

He had no idea which recruit was behind the door in front of him, but whoever it was must have been a powerful threat. One they especially didn't want to escape. 

Either that or Fury was getting paranoid about security because of last night's breakout and all the recruits had security detail now. 

Even so, if Nat's right, I bet that Loki isn't being guarded like this, he thought.

Clint still wasn't sure what to think about that. When you added up all the instances of Loki noticeably getting less attention from S.H.I.E.L.D., even as Thor was labeled "high threat," it seemed a little much for a coincidence. Including the more-than-a-little suspicious file, and it was borderline undeniable. 

The only doubt he had was the how. How could this Loki manage to trick every agent involved with his capture? Especially people like Fury or—

He tensed. Movement.

He wasn't alone in this hallway after all. 

With the silence years of training had brought him, Clint unslung his supply of tranquilizer darts (the bow remained where it was… he didn't want to mistakenly shoot another agent) and melted into the shadowy hallway. 

He listened hard. Yes—two sets of footsteps… and definitely not agents. They were trying too hard to be quiet. 

If these were escaped recruits, why hadn't the alarms gone off? 

Clint readied his gun and waited.

Shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle— 

A head peeked out from around a nearby corner. Clint's finger began to close around the trigger.

Then the owner of the head stepped out farther into the light, and Clint nearly fired at the wall by mistake.

No kidding, it was an escaped recruit… it was Tony Stark. 

Or "Iron Man," as he was apparently being called now. There was a little blue circle of light on his chest, glowing through his shirt just like it had been on TV. 

Stark glanced quickly down the hall, apparently missing the concealed Clint, and beckoned to someone behind him. 

Another man stepped quietly around the corner, looking around nervously. This one Clint didn't recognize, but he was obviously another recruit, to judge from the clothes and demeanor. 

Neither of them looked dangerous. Recruits were supposed to be like Thor, weren't they? Obvious threats. Superhumans. These two could have been any average people off the street. 

Of course, while he didn't know anything about the other one—but he was evidently here for some reason, right?—Stark technically was an average person. When he wasn't wearing that metal suit, he shouldn't have been considered a recruit at all. 

And yeah, orders were orders, but that particular little fact stopped Clint from shooting the tranquilizers for just another second. 

Which incidentally turned out to be the exact amount of time Stark needed to finally notice him lurking in the shadows. 

To his credit, he didn't yelp in terror. Point Stark. "Don't shoot," he said instead, backing up a couple steps. Like a little extra distance would matter with Clint's aim. 

"I don't think you're supposed to be here, Stark," Clint said as he emerged. The gun was still in his hand, but it wasn't pointed at the two recruits. Yet. 

"I don't think you're supposed to be talking to us," came Stark's snappy reply. "That can't be in the rules for super secret agents. Don't you just shoot us and go back—" his fingers tracked a path through the air "—to work?" 

"Tony," the other man hissed. He looked like he wanted to disappear, curling inward and backing nearly to the wall. "What are you doing?" 

"Yeah, sometimes that is my job," Clint said in answer to Stark. "I should get on that. You want to be shot?" He hefted the tranquilizer gun. 

He had to admit to himself that he was curious about how they would react. He had the situation in control, what was the harm? 

"Tony…" the other man said, eyeing the gun warily. 

Stark acted like it wasn't even there. "How much do they tell you, anyway?" he asked, and his voice was serious. "Your boss, leader, whatever. How much do you know about what's going on in this place?" 

Clint almost laughed. The loyalty-questioning thing? Really? The number of times he'd gotten that one… he'd expected a bit better from a self-proclaimed genius. 

Even though I was doing a fine old job questioning my loyalty a few hours ago, his traitorous brain muttered, remembering his conversation with Nat. 

"I just… wonder sometimes. If what we do here is worth it." Something he’d never have said to anyone else… and he’d certainly trusted her answer at the time, but—

Clint shook that off. "Nice try, but not good enou—"

"Do you even know who's behind that door?" Stark continued, pointing to the door of the cell Clint had been guarding all day. The occupant of which Clint did not, in fact, know. 

The truth must have been apparent, because Stark answered for him. "It's Captain America. You guys have Captain America in a freaking cage. Half of you don't even know, and the other half are willingly locking up our country's greatest hero." He took a step closer, staring Clint down (as much as he could… Clint had a few inches on him) as though daring him. 

And what exactly he was daring him to do was clear… 

Clint didn't reply as his mind spiraled around and around, throwing out things like he's bluffing or Captain America has been dead since the 1940s or you'd know about something that big.

Because it was big. Clint had grown up hearing about Captain America just like every other kid. It was history mixed with pop culture mixed with urban legend. And part of the reason the world was still so fixated on the captain was the mysterious disappearance at the end. 

Which made it a big thing to lie about, too. 

Clint looked from the door to Stark, who was still making the I-dare-you face. Slowly, he walked over to the door…

Put his hand on the metal that barred it shut…

And…

"What're you doing there, Agent Barton?" 

Clint automatically pulled back from the door. The newcomer's voice was light, ever-so-sarcastic on the words "Agent Barton" and nearly as familiar to him as his own. 

"Agent Romanoff," he answered just as sarcastically. 

Natasha walked up from behind him, eyeing Stark and the other man, both of whom had frozen. "Didn't think you were on escort tonight." 

"Nope, apparently our containment areas aren't good enough for billionaires." Clint turned around so that all three of them were in his line of sight. He frowned as he got a closer look at Natasha. 

Her eyes weren't that blue, were they? 

It was probably just the lighting… or he'd gotten less sleep than he'd thought…

Anyway. Clint continued talking. "It's actually good that you're here, you can take them back and I can stay on guard duty—" 

"Actually, your shift just ended," Natasha corrected. 

"Why do you know that and I don't?" Clint was positive that no one had given him a specific amount of time that he was supposed to be guarding this cell. The only way that Nat would know that was if—

"Cause they just sent me to relieve you." 

Clint frowned. Natasha Romanoff had an extensive set of skills, and S.H.I.E.L.D. had used her for a lot of different jobs… but putting the Black Widow on a routine guard shift was a little like using a fire hose to fill a water balloon. 

"Not as a guard," Natasha added, as though she knew what Clint was thinking—probably because she did. She was about to continue when she noticed Stark and the other man still standing a few feet away, unmoving with Clint's tranquilizer gun pointed at them. 

She dropped her voice. "Just to resume my interrogation with…" A nod to the door. 

"With no backup?" Normally, Clint wouldn't have worried about it, but… Captain America. 

"Are you suggesting I need backup?" Natasha smiled in that dangerous-teasing way she had.

"Last time you did." 

"I guess they decided I didn't need it after all." 

"Okay." Clint studied her. It could have been his imagination… but something about her didn't seem right. Bringing it up, though, might not end well. At least not right now. "Well, if you're going in there, then I can bring these two back to their cell." 

Natasha stilled for a moment. "It won't take that long, I can do it." 

Something was definitely off. "If my shift is over, there's nothing else for me to do." 

"You don't know where their cell is," Natasha pointed out easily. "I'll take them back, it's fine. Why don't you go get some coffee or something." 

Clint really did not want to leave an acting-weird Natasha alone with two escaped recruits and Captain America in an unguarded cell, but he really didn't know where Stark and the other man were supposed to be, and there wasn't really an easy way to argue about it here. 

If I leave, I can tell Phil or Maria or somebody about this, he thought. As long as nothing blows up in the meantime. 

"Fine," Clint said. He put his gun away and forced his expression to appear normal. "I think I will go get coffee."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, and an extra thank you for everyone who comments or kudos-es!


	15. Three Bros, Chilling in a Jail Cell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Due to the mysterious plans of a mind-controlled Natasha, Tony and Bruce end up meeting the guy from the World War II movies. Back at Sam's house, the rescue gang makes a plan.

Steve was jolted awake at the sudden burst of light against his closed eyelids. The door was opening.

He blinked furiously, trying to adjust himself, but he barely had time to register the fact that two people—really, barely more than silhouettes—were being shoved into the cell with him before the door swung shut yet again.

And again… darkness. 

Steve slumped down with a faint clatter of chains, resigned again to being kept in the dark in more ways than one. 

But then the silence was broken by a voice.

"Hello?" 

The voice was male and unfamiliar. 

And apparently not done with talking, because a few seconds later: 

"So I'm just gonna make sure we got the right cell… are you Captain America?" 

"Who's asking?" Steve finally spoke. 

There was a small intake of breath, and a different voice (also male and unfamiliar, coincidentally) muttered "he sounds just like in the old movies." 

"How many of you are there?" Steve demanded. He still couldn't see anything in the pitch black… 

"Just the two of us," the first voice said hastily. "And we're in the same boat as you, so don't get all—" 

"S.H.I.E.L.D. is holding you too?" The only other times Steve's cell door had opened was so he could be interrogated by S.H.I.E.L.D. Why would they stick random other captives in with him? 

The sound of fingers snapping came from the direction of the first voice. "S.H.I.E.L.D.! I knew it was something like that!" 

"You—you didn't know…?" The second voice trailed off. "Never mind." 

"It's an overly long acronym," the first voice defended. 

"What would J.A.R.V.I.S. say if he heard that?" The second voice sounded almost teasing.

"J.A.R.V.I.S. is classy—" the first voice started, but Steve cut him off.

"Enough of that." His eyes were adjusting to the sudden dark-after-light more, and he could just make out—though he probably couldn't have before the serum—two shapes crouching on the floor beside him. "Who are you?" 

"Right, introductions." The owner of the first voice clapped his hands together once. Steve expected him to introduce himself, but instead he indicated the other man. "This is Bruce Banner." 

"Um, hi," the second voice said. "You're really… Steve Rogers?" 

"Yes…" Steve frowned. It was plausible for people to have heard of Captain America—all the touring and publicity and bad advertisements—but hardly anyone outside the army would easily reconcile that with the name Steve Rogers. Right? 

He shook off the pesky thoughts again, about what is going on in the outside world, and focused on the first voice. "And who are you?" 

"Tony Stark." The first voice said it offhandedly, like it should have been obvious.

Stark. 

This must have been the man Steve had seen earlier, the Weird Howard Look-alike. They must have been related, but Steve couldn't remember Howard ever mentioning a family member named Tony. 

Should he ask? It could have been significant, after all. Maybe this S.H.I.E.L.D. had captured more people along with Steve, and if Howard's relative was one of them, maybe they also had Howard… 

But there were more pressing questions that Steve had to ask first. "Why did S.H.I.E.L.D. put you in here?" 

A momentary pause. One of the shapes shifted in the dark. "See… we don't really know," Tony admitted. "We were in a different cell—that one had lights, I don't know why this one doesn't—" 

Intimidation tactics, Steve guessed. 

"Speaking of lights," Bruce Banner broke in, addressing Tony. "Why isn't yours on?"

Tony paused, caught off guard. "It's not?" There was a sound like someone tapping on a metal surface, and then a blue glow flickered into existence. It was faint, but it made all the difference in the darkness. 

The blue glow lit shadows on all three of their faces. Yep—these two were the men he'd seen earlier. Up close, Tony didn't look so much like Howard—although there was a resemblance. 

Howard, though, had never had a light stuck in his chest.

"What is that thing?" Steve asked.

Tony didn't answer right away, still fiddling with the strange device. "See, it's fine." His voice was tight, like it was causing him pain.

As a hunk of metal lodged in the chest would be wont to do. 

"I knew you shouldn't have messed with that." Bruce Banner peered over at the flickering device. 

"Saying I 'messed' with it implies that I don't know what I'm doing, and I built the damn thing," Tony argued. (An engineer like Howard, then?) "Besides, if I hadn’t ‘messed with it,’ we’d still be in that cell." 

"Yeah, and now we're just in a different cell." Bruce Banner shook his head and turned back to Steve. "It's called an arc reactor and it's keeping him alive." 

"And you took it apart for materials to escape?" Steve couldn't help but be a little impressed. A man had to be truly desperate to do something like that. 

"See, he gets it," Tony said. "Of course, our wonderful plan only worked up until we got here—" 

"—and got caught," finished Bruce Banner. 

"Some guard with a bow and arrow." Tony shrugged: as you do. "And a seriously hot—" 

Both Steve and Bruce leveled him with a look. 

"—anyway, she put us in here," Tony said, changing tacks. "But that's what doesn't make sense, because she waited for the other guard to leave before she put us in here—and she was trying really hard to get him to leave." 

"So she has an agenda," Steve said. Everyone did—especially in an organization like this. Which could be useful, but... "That doesn't necessarily mean she'll help us." 

"She kind of already did," Tony pointed out. "Indirectly. By putting us in this cell instead of letting the archer guy put us back in the other cell. A stretch can be made for helpfulness." 

Steve shook his head. "How does being here help you?" 

"Cause we were trying to find y—" Bruce started, but Tony cut him off. 

"Strength in numbers, Star-Spangled Man. If we want to get out of here, I can think of a couple ways a supersoldier could be of use." Tony studied Steve's chains intently. "As soon as we get rid of these, because honestly, not a good look." 

Steve was starting to wish that Howard Stark was here instead of Tony Stark. He didn't like the insinuation that he was only useful because of the serum (and it doesn't matter what I think about it), nor did he like the reminder of his old song-and-dance routine. 

Instead of saying anything, though, he just held up his handcuffed wrists. He'd tried using brute force again and again once he'd first woken up, but they were clearly designed for greater strength. "Can you pick locks?" 

Wordlessly—for once—Tony pulled out a thin metal rod-looking thing and got to work on the handcuffs. 

He broke out of a cell with that? Maybe this particular Stark had his merits after all.

"We heated the metal," Bruce said quietly, guessing his thoughts. He was looking over Tony's shoulder, but his words were clearly intended for Steve. "Then slid it in the gap between the door and the wall and melted the part that held it shut. It was quiet. No alarms." 

Steve nodded slowly. He still didn't completely understand—how had they started a fire and how much patience must they have had to wait for it to melt and how does someone even think of this plan—but just then the cuff on his left hand popped apart with a click and Tony switched his attention to the other one.

"Thanks," Steve murmured, flexing his freed wrist. 

"Don't thank me yet." Tony was hunkered down, his arc reactor shining its blue light over the second cuff so that he could see. A few more twists and clicks and— 

Pop. 

Steve immediately shot to his feet, letting the empty chains clang down on the floor. His skin was sore where the handcuffs had chafed against them, but his healing factor would take care of that in no time. For now, he just needed OUT of this cell. 

"You can thank me now," Tony added, standing up and making a show of dusting off his hands. 

Steve ignored him and looked over the door. It was a huge slab of metal, and from the way the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had handled it earlier, it would take multiple men to force it open. 

"Even once we're out of here, what's the plan after that?" he heard Bruce say from behind him. "The alarms might not go off, but there's no way this place doesn't have security cameras." 

"We'll take it as it comes," Tony said, he and Bruce walking up so they were next to Steve. "Anyway, we have you." 

"I said I'm not doing it, Tony." 

"What can you do?" Steve asked, turning to face the other man. There was nothing visibly different about him, not like Tony's reactor or Steve's serum-body. 

Bruce shifted uncomfortably. "Hopefully you'll never need to find out." 

Okay, sensitive topic. Steve decided to drop it—at least for now—and approached the cell door. 

Noticing him, Tony held up his little metal pieces. "I've got these still, so we can open the—" 

Steve backed up and hurled himself into the door with all his strength. With a thunderous CRASH, it toppled into the hallway, torn off its hinges.

Light spilled into the cell, illuminating the shocked faces of Tony and Bruce. 

"—door," Tony finished hollowly.

An alarm began to wail its broken heart. Steve looked back into the cell, a smirk inexplicably finding its way onto his face. 

"Well, Stark, you said we should take it as it comes." 

___

When Sam Wilson had woken up that morning, he'd anticipated what was his typical Saturday schedule: go for a run, grab something from the cafe down the block, maybe get more milk from the grocery store. 

What he had not anticipated was having five complete strangers—comprising an Air Force colonel, two Stark Industries employees, an astrophysicist, and someone who he assumed was some kind of intern but didn't seem to have any purpose beyond playing Candy Crush on his couch—gathered around his kitchen table and planning ways to infiltrate one of the most covert intelligence agencies in the world. 

Good thing the milk could wait until tomorrow. 

"What security did you have to go through before they let you in?" Pepper Potts was asking, frowning down at her phone, which was displaying the location Sam had just given her on Google Maps.

"They didn't 'let me in,' I was brought," Sam clarified. He remembered that day; it was shortly after Riley's death that S.H.I.E.L.D. had decided to shut down the FALCON project. There had been a lot of questioning, a lot of rules he had to follow, and a quick send-off into retirement. "S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't really the airport security type of place." 

"Were you there voluntarily, though?" 

"How do you define voluntary?" Sam asked sarcastically. "But if you're wondering if I was kidnapped like Stark, then no. They thought if they could take away the tech, they could solve their problem." 

The astrophysicist—Jane Foster her name was—bumped the eraser end of a pencil against the table. "Then why didn't they do the same thing with the Iron Man suit? Confiscate it like the FALCON technology?" 

"Because S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't know where the Iron Man suit is," Colonel Rhodes put in from his position against the counter. "As a matter of fact, it's in a closet in Tony's lab, but as you can imagine he keeps quite a bit of security around his stuff." 

"Also the FALCON tech was technically government property, not mine, and the Iron Man suit is Stark's," Sam added. "Two different scenarios. In this particular case, it was easier just to take Stark." 

You know. As easy as breaking and entering a billionaire's house could ever be. But hey, it's S.H.I.E.L.D, he thought.

"Then they're probably questioning him about the suit's location," Pepper guessed. "Would they let him go if they had it?" Apparently noticing the looks on everyone's faces, she quickly added, "I'm just trying to scope out all our options." 

"Giving a super-powered robot to a creepy government agency does not sound like a good option," came Darcy's input from the couch. 

"It's not a robot, and Pepper has a point," Colonel Rhodes said. "The priority is Tony, not the suit." 

And that was why Sam had agreed to help them. The colonel and Pepper Potts, at least—as well as the other guy who was staying mostly quiet and as a result, hadn't introduced himself to Sam—seemed to share that view of thinking: they were there for their friend. And wanting to save your friend was something Sam understood. 

The other two, though—probably because, as he understood it—they had never even met Stark—were more concerned with S.H.I.E.L.D. in general. Which you had to deal with sometimes if you wanted help. People always had different motivations. He just had to watch and make sure they still all had the same goal. 

And that was when Jane Foster dropped a bombshell. "But he's not the only one trapped by S.H.I.E.L.D." 

Everyone stared at her. Darcy even looked up from her phone. 

"It's a theory," Jane continued, having to be blind not to notice the eyes on her, after all. "But it makes sense. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s mission is to protect the world, right? And they've decided to do that by neutralizing overpowered threats? Well, there are people a lot more powerful than Tony Stark in this world. And if they're willing to capture him—and he's basically a regular guy who built a machine—then it follows that they'd also capture others." 

"Is this your theory about what happened to Thor—" Darcy started. Jane turned slightly pink and muttered "Not entirely." 

"What do you mean by 'others?'" Pepper asked carefully. 

Jane threw up her hands, nearly poking Pepper's shoulder with her pencil. "If you want me to say superheroes, I'll say superheroes, but that shouldn't dismiss the point." 

"Superheroes," Sam repeated. A smile cracked across his face. "Like Captain America?" 

"Well, I doubt they have Captain America—" Jane scoffed. 

"What if they do, though?" Darcy had finally put her phone away and was leaning conspiratorially over the armrest of the couch. "You never know." 

"Darce, stop with the conspiracy theories," Jane sighed.

"But what if." 

"So, what do you think?" Jane asked, looking around the rest of the table, which was strewn with scribbled notes and old paperwork Sam had gotten from S.H.I.E.L.D. 

None of it had been helpful except for providing the location. The fact was that S.H.I.E.L.D. had had decades to hide, to get its plans into motion. Even with Sam's information, the resources of Stark Industries and Colonel Rhodes, and their collective brainpower—not as light as it seemed, especially in the case of Jane Foster—it would still be nearly impossible to infiltrate them. 

And they all knew it. 

"I think we'd better get going," Colonel Rhodes replied, stepping away from the counter. 

"Me too." Pepper stood up. 

Jane followed suit. "I'm in." 

The other Stark Industries man—Sam still wasn't sure of his name—nodded enthusiastically. "Ready when you are." 

A little late, Darcy nearly rolled off the couch and scrambled to her feet. "I go where Jane goes if I want my credits." 

Sam also pushed his chair back and got up. Everyone's eyes flicked to him, possibly expecting another declaration of assent. Instead, he walked over to the stairs and started climbing. 

"Where's he going?" he heard Darcy ask from behind him.

Sam reached his bedroom and made a beeline to the closet. He started to riffle through the various junk on the floor.

Where… did… I... put… it… oh, here we go.

Not bothering to shut the door, he hefted the clunky item—although all things considered, it was lighter than one would think—and headed back downstairs. 

The five were waiting in a silence that was hovering on the edge of awkward. Although they all looked up when Sam returned, Darcy was the first to speak. 

"Aaaand he's back." 

"Yep." Sam set the item down on the table with a distinct thunk. Was this showing off? Who cared, it was cool. 

"What is that?" Pepper and Jane gasped in unison. 

Sam smiled. This was the first time in years that he had gotten them out, and definitely the first time he was planning to use them. "These would be the result of the EXO-7 FALCON project." 

"They're wings." Jane looked in awe. More accurately, about ten seconds away from exploding with a billion and one questions about the gleaming metal wings.

"That they are." Sam surveyed the table, meeting Rhodes's and Pepper's eyes. "And they're definitely capable of helping find your friend. Or, you know—" he shot a teasing look at Darcy. "—Captain America."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	16. The Elevator Fight Scene (No, Not That One)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint runs into some difficulty while confronting Natasha. Thor is paid a visit.

Clint should have figured that no one would believe him. 

Yes, his claim of "I think Loki did something to the Black Widow—possibly something magic if you believe what everyone's saying about him and Thor—which is why she's acting weird... and also I left her alone with Captain America, Iron Man, and a random other recruit" was crazy, but this was S.H.I.E.L.D.! They dealt with crazy all the time! It was basically in their job description! 

He'd come to the conclusion that Natasha's strange behavior was a result of Loki, after the fourth time an agent had ignored him—he'd be remembering that, Richard—and he'd been left in the hallway with nothing but his thoughts. And it made sense. Really, it was the only thing that made sense. Nat hadn't had any assignments lined up (which was why her claim about having been sent to interrogate the captain was suspicious) and she'd been determined to find out Loki's location.

And when Natasha Romanoff was determined to do something, she did it.

Clint had no doubt that she'd found Loki, and that must have been when… whatever happened to her happened. The whatever that manifested in eerily blue eyes and straight-up uncharacteristic behavior. 

Clearly not normal power-of-suggestion tactics, nor normal brainwashing. Not many people could try that on Nat and live anyway. There was the possibility of her being drugged somehow, but then surely she would show more physical signs than just… blue eyes. And again, not many people could try that on Nat and live. But if the "Norse god" thing had any weight, then Loki could have done something to her with… well, with magic. 

But did any of his fellow agents appreciate this clever deduction? No, no, they did not. 

He could give them the benefit of the doubt and chalk up their lack of acknowledgement to them also being mind controlled… or it was because they were all a bunch of dicks.

A faint beeeeeep sounded in his ears. The sound his hearing aids made when they were low on battery power. 

Clint cursed under his breath and started walking over to the nearby elevator, already planning out his route so that he could swing by to where he stashed extra batteries and then go find Fury, or Maria, or Phil, or someone that he hadn't tried yet that might listen to him. 

He pressed the button and waited, so caught up in his own spiraling thoughts that he hardly noticed the doors sliding open.

He did notice, however, the red-haired figure standing inside.

For a moment, the two of them just stared at each other, both equally shocked.

Clint managed to recover first. "That must have been one quick interrogation." He held his breath to see how she would answer.

Maybe magical mind control has a time limit. Maybe it's worn off, or Loki had a change of plan, or… or… 

Natasha's wide smile didn't reach up to her undeniably blue eyes, and Clint knew right then that he was dealing with the wrong Nat. "Oh, it turned out you were right after all. They're sending someone else in, I'm not needed at the moment." 

"Then you won't mind if I join you?" Clint stepped inside the elevator without waiting for an answer, barely a second before the doors started to close. 

"Of course not." Was she gritting her teeth? 

Clint jabbed at a couple buttons at random. The elevator shuddered and began to descend. 

After a few floors passed by, Clint turned to Nat as casually as he could. "So, did you find out anything else about Loki while I was on guard duty?" 

"It's not worth it," Natasha replied swiftly. "I have better things to do with my time." 

Clint cocked his head. "But you were so interested last night." He nonchalantly brushed his hand against his belt… and felt nothing. His tranquilizer gun was gone. 

Did he seriously leave it on the desk when he was arguing with Richard?

Why was he like this?

Natasha dragged his attention away from his unexpected lack of weapon. "Loki is locked up. Completely secure. There's nothing to worry about." 

"You sure about that?" Clint met her gaze. She nodded. "All right then." 

"All right then?" Natasha repeated incredulously. 

"Yeah. I trust you." Beat. Natasha's wariness was slowly fading back into calm... "Oh yeah, before I forget, I was wondering where you got those blue contacts, they look so realistic—" 

The next second, Clint found himself being slammed into the elevator wall. Natasha pressed against his throat, her charade exposed. 

Can't breathe can't breathe can't breathe—

"Nat… " he choked out. "Come… on… you… know… me… " 

No response. Natasha just dug her arm harder against his neck. He wildly searched her face for any sign of recognition, but the Natasha he knew was gone. This was a puppet of Loki, emotionless and empty. 

So I'll do it the old-fashioned way, I guess, he thought.

He brought up his leg and kicked out, forcing Natasha away. She was after him again in a heartbeat, and the problem was that in an elevator, there was limited space. 

The two of them struggled on the floor, two sets of expert training warring against each other. And Clint had the disadvantage—ow. He had the disadvantage of not wanting to seriously hurt his best friend—smack—and he had the disadvantage in that she was simply the better fighter. 

Clint rolled away yet again, and of course that was when his hearing aids finally decided to die. 

This is not my day… s. Week. Month. Life. 

All the sounds of their fight—the yelling, the grunting, the sounds of every connecting punch and kick—were gone, replaced with the roar of silence in his ears. 

All right. He could work with this. It wouldn't be the first time. 

Clint surged upward, managing to throw Natasha off as he struggled to his feet. She regained her balance quickly enough, however, and whirled around to meet him again. 

It was a panic move, but all Clint could think of was yikes she's gonna kill me and shoved her away as hard as he could.

Natasha hit the opposite wall, so hard he could feel the vibrations. 

He caught his breath and approached. Slowly. Warily. Ready to fight back in case she attacked.

But strangely enough, it didn't look like she was going to…

Natasha rubbed her head and looked around the elevator in confusion. Clint peered closer, and noticed with a sigh of relief that her eyes were back to their normal green.

As she got to her feet, her lips formed the word Clint—followed by more words that he couldn't lip-read fast enough. Probably some cursing in there, though. 

"My aids are dead," Clint said, concentrating in order for his mouth to make the right sounds. He usually had batteries on him so this exact thing didn't happen, but sometimes life happened. 

Natasha switched to sign language without missing a beat. ‘I'm pretty sure I was just possessed by L-O-K-I, we're all in danger.’

‘No kidding,’ Clint signed back. ‘No one believed me, though. Are you okay?’ 

‘Fine. It's obvious we can't trust S.H.I.E.L.D. with him.’ Instead of spelling it out, Natasha signed the actual word for "shield," which was a fist in front of the chest. 

‘Then who can we trust?’ Clint shook his head in frustration. ‘He's powerful—needs people just as powerful to stop him.’ 

And the list of people who could actually do that was not much longer than "Thor." Loki had manipulated nearly everyone in S.H.I.E.L.D. in order to get what he wanted—which so far wasn't clear, but he was flying under the radar like he had obviously planned. It seemed like he and Natasha were the only ones who even realized… everyone else was under his spell. 

The elevator doors opened, and the two of them stepped out. Clint had pushed a button at random, but it seemed that his finger had subconsciously aimed for a floor he knew well. 

Natasha led the way to her room. There was really nowhere else to go. Clint nodded to the few agents they passed on the way, low-key checking for blue eyes. 

Once inside her room, Nat dug around in a drawer until she found some batteries, which she then dropped into Clint's hand. 

"Why do you have these," Clint muttered, unable to hear himself but also unable to sign while he fiddled with the hearing aids. 

He looked up in case he'd just missed her answer, but instead of looking at him, Natasha was staring at a neat stack of files on the bedside table. 

Phil and his paperwork. 

Clint took a closer look, wondering what had caught her attention like that. 

The file on top was about her most recent assignment… interrogation of one Steven Rogers. 

‘People just as powerful, you were saying?’ Natasha signed, and the gleam in her eyes was almost more intimidating than when they were blue.

___

Thor was back in the cell.

Or actually, "back" wasn't quite the word to use, considering that it was highly doubtful S.H.I.E.L.D. had put him in the exact same cell as before. That cell had been, in fact, completely destroyed courtesy of Thor himself. 

So he was in a similar cell, if not the exact same one. 

Too much of it was the same, in fact. Small space. Clear walls. A walkway all around for any agents who wanted to take a look at the newest prisoner (none had, Thor wasn't sure if that was good or not). And on the wall outside the cell, that recording device with the blinking red light. 

They're probably keeping a closer watch on that thing now that they know I won't submit, he thought.

But although this cell was much the same as the first, there were a few key differences. For one, the door was locked with some kind of keypad. For another, there were more of the recording devices hung in the corners of the room, maybe where they thought he couldn't see.

And, of course, there was the fact that thick metal handcuffs now encircled Thor's arms, chaining him to the floor of the cell. 

That was easily the most frustrating part.

For the first hour or so after he'd woken up—he was really starting to hate that guy with the little darts—he had shouted this frustration at the empty room, his thunderous voice echoing off the walls. 

Shouting had accomplished exactly nothing.

So he'd resorted himself to silently pacing around and around, dragging the chains in a circle. It was not giving up! The agents had to come in here sometime, and all he had to do was wait. 

Thor slumped against the wall and closed his eyes, futilely wishing for Mjolnir. 

"Giving up already? How the mighty have fallen." 

Thor's eyes snapped open. Then he almost closed them again, because what he saw made no sense.

Loki was standing on the other side of his cell. Not handcuffed like Thor, not with any visible signs of restraint, no agents in sight… the red light on the recording devices had even gone dark.

"I am not in the mood for your illusions, Loki," Thor grumbled. "And I am not giving up," he added in a lower voice, mostly meant for himself.

"Oh, this is no illusion." Loki traced his hand across the glass. Thor felt rather like a fish in a bowl. "I'd prove it to you, but it would be a little hard when you're—in there—" 

"I know where I am! And you expect me to believe that S.H.I.E.L.D. would let you out? I'm not falling for another trick." 

"I'm sure they didn't want to let me out. It was just a matter of persuasion." 

Thor narrowed his eyes at his brother. "Loki, what did you do." The "this time" was left unsaid. 

"Why? Do you care about them?" Loki's eyes were alight. He was enjoying this, the little— 

Thor focused. "I care about those I am sworn to protect." 

"Don't you see that it doesn't matter?" A shimmer split the air beside Loki, revealing what his illusion—Thor knew he had one—had hidden: a scepter. 

Not good. 

"When I'm finished, you won't need to 'protect' these mortals anymore. And thanks to this—" Loki twirled the scepter "—they won't even try to fight back. It's the best solution for everybody." 

Thor shook his head. "Who have you been talking to, Loki?" 

That put a bit of a halt in his step. "... what?" 

"You never wanted to rule. You never even cared about Midgard—Earth. Someone's put these ideas in your mind. Who was it?" 

Tell me so that the minute I get out of here, I can go kick their ass, he thought.

But Loki seemed to shake off his unease. "You won't live long enough to need to worry about it." He turned to leave.

Thor stared at the wall and wondered when his life would make sense. "Then why did you come here and tell me all this?" Especially when both of them were still in a S.H.I.E.L.D. building and Loki was wasting time that he could have spent escaping? 

Loki paused just before he reached the doorway and looked back. "I wanted someone to realize my triumph." 

With that, he shut the door behind him and was gone. No doubt off to leave the headquarters and begin his so-called glorious plan. 

That he only told me about for the dramatics. Thor shook his head. Loki, you should have been in theater. 

The red light on the recording device blinked on again, but all it would show now was Thor alone in the cell. Strongly considering banging his head against said cell. 

All wasn't lost, though. Even if Loki was now free and plotting away, Thor could still find a way to stop him. He was the god of thunder, after all. No mortal prison could hold him for long.

And if he concentrated, he could just barely feel Mjolnir stirring on the very edges of his grasp…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading!


	17. Are You Sure, Though?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dramatic music figuratively plays as Sam flies alongside the Stark Industries plane to S.H.I.E.L.D. Meanwhile, Tony faces a crisis.

It was a good thing that the plane was so high up. 

People would have thought it strange, after all. Not the plane itself, which of course people saw every day—although this was a private aircraft belonging to a certain Stark Industries, which was perhaps less common. 

No, the strangest part would definitely have been the oddly shaped thing flying beside it. 

"It's a bird, it's a plane?" No… something else. Maybe a bit of both, in fact.

Because while the plane may have been carrying Pepper Potts, James Rhodes, Happy Hogan, Jane Foster, and Darcy Lewis, its passengers did not include one Sam Wilson, who was perfectly capable of flying without a plane while wearing his specialized set of wings. 

The Falcon was airborne again. 

And he and the plane were on a direct route to S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters.

___

Tony almost wished they would come to another door just so he could watch Steve Rogers kick it down again, because that? Was freaking awesome.

The common sense part of his brain (which he did in fact have, contrary to what Rhodey, his immediate family, and most of the populated world would say) pointed out that it was probably a good thing Rogers hadn't had to force open any more doors, because there were enough alarms going off already, and setting off more would not help their situation.

Maybe once they escaped, he could bring Rogers to his workshop, and Rogers could break things with his serum-enhanced strength, and Tony could collect data on it, because this whole thing was fascinating and also kind of his childhood fantasy—

And that right there was when he needed to focus. 

After Steve had broken down the door, negating the need for Tony's newfound cell-escaping skills, the three of them had started down the hallway to the sound of alarms.

Problem: none of them knew where they were going. 

Solution: Tony had been in a lot of similar buildings before and could make some educated guesses on which way to go next whenever they reached a turn.

Slight amendment to solution: The other two did not know that Tony did not know where they were going, which would be fun to explain if they hit a dead end or something. 

And now that he’d thought that, they were probably immediately going to hit a dead end. 

"Left or right?" Rogers's voice nudged Tony out of his thoughts. They had indeed reached another fork. This was an inconveniently big place. Actually, maybe that was better, because apparently no guards had gotten to them yet—

Tony looked quickly down both ways. To the left were what looked like more cells; the entire floor seemed to be cells. To the right… was that an elevator? 

"Right," Tony confirmed. 

"Don't you think it's a little weird that no guards have come down here yet?" Bruce asked as they hurried down the hallway to the right. He sounded nervous, and Tony cast a quick glance at him just in case, but the scientist appeared fine. "Usually there should be some on every level, especially ones with prisoners." 

"Maybe it's their lunch break," Tony suggested. 

"Maybe it has something to do with that agent who put you in my cell," Rogers speculated. "If she got the archer guy out of the way, maybe she did the same to the other guards… for whatever reason." He paused. "And I'm pretty sure it's nighttime, Tony." 

How would you even know that? Also, if he's calling me Tony, does that mean I have to call him Steve? Tony changed the course of his thoughts. "Late lunch."

"As long as it keeps working out for us, I don't care what her reasons are," Bruce said. 

An unfamiliar voice issued out of nowhere. "You might change your mind about that." 

None of them literally jumped in surprise, but Tony thought it was fair to say that they did so figuratively. As it was, he whipped his head around in search of the voice, Bruce froze in his tracks, and Steve snapped into a defensive position. 

Tony half expected to see a storm of agents suddenly pop out of the walls. Yet the hallway was still empty except for them. 

"Who's there?" Steve demanded. 

Tony gave the hall another sweep. Nope, no one there—

"My name's Clint Barton, I'm gonna help you out." 

Okay, the voice had come from… the ceiling? 

"Are you… in the vents?" Tony asked skeptically, craning his neck to try to see into the nearest air duct.

The voice snorted. "Why would S.H.I.E.L.D. have the vents in here be big enough to fit a person inside? That's asking for escape attempts. No, I'm using the loudspeaker system." 

Bruce frowned. "Why does S.H.I.E.L.D. have a loudspeaker system?" 

"You don't want to know." 

The man's voice did sound slightly staticky. And the longer he spoke, the more Tony was sure he'd heard this man before, recently. It was just hard to tell through the static…

"What do you mean by 'help us out?'" Tony asked. 

"Literally. Help you escape." 

"Were you captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. too?" Steve, this time.

There was an uncomfortable cough. "Uh, no." 

"Then why do you want to help us?"

"Because we're hoping you'll repay the favor," the man's voice said simply. 

Tony didn't miss the plural. "'We?'" 

"My—" There was an intake of breath, a swear, and a loud crash through the loudspeaker before the man spoke again, this time more hurried. "My friend and I, but she's going to break Thor out and I can't keep these guys in the control room knocked out forever, so we don't have much time. Get in the elevator, go to level one, then take a right and two lefts and meet me—" Another thudding noise. "Go!" 

The loudspeaker shut off with a squawk of static.

Tony, Bruce, and Steve all made eye contact before simultaneously starting to run toward the elevator. 

Steve, predictably, got there first (sending a wave of other childhood-fantasy-type thoughts through Tony's already buzzing brain) and slammed his hand against the button. 

Tony and Bruce caught up just as the doors slid open and joined Steve inside. 

The elevator was as plain and nondescript as one would expect from a secret agency; it was all black except for the floor buttons, which Steve pushed. It began to rise slowly. 

Tony attempted to lean against the wall without looking like he was leaning against a wall, because superheroes didn't need the support of walls, even when their chests hurt and their arc reactors were acting up. 

I probably need to fix this thing, he thought offhandedly. But not right now. There's no time. 

Steve broke the silence first. "So who do you think that man was?" The “and do you think we can trust him” was left unsaid.

"He's a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent." Tony and Steve both turned to see Bruce, who was standing in the corner and looking confused at their blank faces. "Am I the only one who pays attention? He said his name was Clint Barton. Like the guy who the red-haired woman called Agent Barton." He shook his head. "This is a trap." 

"I thought his voice sounded familiar," Tony muttered half to himself. "So the archer guy is trying to help us now, when literally an hour ago he had a gun pointed at us. Not reassuring." 

"If this is a trap, it's an elaborate one, and I don't see what they get out of it," Steve argued. 

"They get us—" Tony waved a hand around the three of them "—in a shiny new cell that's harder to break out of." 

That had to be the plan, right? He, Bruce, and Steve herded like sheep into a reinforced cell. Probably separated this time, and who knew what S.H.I.E.L.D. would do with the arc reactor… 

"But they could easily tranq us and put us in a new cell without... all of this." Steve made a vague gesture that seemed to encompass the voice from the loudspeaker, the mysterious agent woman, and the past eight hours in general. 

"So you're going to trust the archer guy?" 

"Not 'trust.'"

"But you're going to the control room?" 

"If you have a better idea, I'd love to hear it!" 

"There're plenty of better ideas." Tony glanced behind him at Bruce, whose head was swiveling back and forth between Tony and Steve as they argued. "Come on, back me up." 

The elevator rose up another floor. 

"Look, I agree that we can't trust any S.H.I.E.L.D. agents," Bruce said. Tony pointed at him and made a "see?" face to Steve. "But the fact is we don't know the layout of this place; if we try to find our own way out we're gonna get caught." His eyes darted to the floor and back up again. "It's definitely a trap, but at least the control room will be something we expect." 

"Thank you," Steve said.

Tony did not like the way the tables in this room—elevator—were turning. Was the logic here “it's inevitable we get caught again, so let's try to get caught in a predictable environment?” Did neither of them think he could get them all out of here? Was there no optimism? 

And if HE was the only source of optimism here, that really said stuff about their little group. 

Unless… Tony eyed the two of them. Steve, who was clearly not an average guy, and Bruce, who at least could hide it but was still decidedly—and dangerously—different. 

He'd been thinking of this situation from his own perspective: Tony Stark, a man who could go home at the end of the day after taking off the Iron Man suit. For whom being trapped here was an unfortunate occurrence, something news stories would run on once he was safe and sound again. Who didn't belong in this prison base of a headquarters. 

For Steve and Bruce, places like this would forever be their reality. They didn't trust Tony to see them safely escaped because for them there was no escape. They weren't citizens wrongfully taken prisoner by a deceitful agency, they were the snarls in the system. Sneaking out didn't work because the other side always had the resources, the motivation, the ability to come after them. The only way out was to beat them at their own game. 

And they were strong enough to come out on top in a fight, which is what both of them seemed to be expecting in the control room. 

Without the Iron Man suit, Tony was not. 

But if he was sticking with these guys—and there was no doubt of that, not anymore—he'd have to figure out a way to be. 

When the elevator finally reached level one, the doors opened and the three men walked out into another identical silent hallway. None of them said a word to each other.

But all of them took a right and two lefts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> I totally meant to post this earlier but I foRGOT aah  
> Hope you enjoy anyway!


	18. Gang's All Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint isn't having the best day at work. Neither is Natasha.

Just another day at work for Clint: breaking into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s control room and fighting all his coworkers. 

Not that it involved a lot of fighting—come on—since Hawkeye was a much more fully trained agent than the random tech dudes in the control room—tech dudes as a gender-neutral term, actually, it wasn't all men in there—and basically walked in and knocked them all out. 

Mentally regretting the lack of his tranquilizer gun the whole time. Honestly, it could've done the job so much easier and with so much less collateral damage and likelihood of getting fired later—

But anyway. Clint did not have his tranquilizer gun, he could not use his bow and arrow on fellow agents, so he did physically knock them all out and then page Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and… er… whoever the third recruit was, over the loudspeaker. 

This did not go entirely as planned, however, when about halfway through his message, the unconscious agents started to wake up, and started fighting back, and then he had to knock them out again, and on and on. 

In fact, he was still doing that when Captain America opened the door. 

Clint dropped the newly-unconscious body of one of the agents—Greg, he was pretty sure it was Greg—sorry, Greg—and stared. His mind was stuttering a little on the whole thoughts-forming thing. 

"Hey," Clint said, because his mouth was an idiot sometimes. 

Steve Rogers—that guy was Captain America Phil would freak out so hard—just gave a nod and scanned around the room. After apparently deciding the unconscious agents were not threats, he focused on Clint again. "You're Agent Barton?" 

"Yeah. Clint." 

His head was going to hurt from all the banging it against a wall he was mentally doing. 

He attempted to continue. "So—" 

"Not to be that guy?" Tony Stark appeared from behind Rogers. He looked just like he did on TV, besides the blue light glowing through his white shirt. "Cause I always hate that guy, but. I believe we're on a time limit, so I would cut to it already." 

Rogers slowly entered the control room, all the while staring him down. "What's it gonna be, Agent?" 

Clint stared right back. Somehow it hadn't really crossed his mind that the recruits might fight… at least fight him. They had a much bigger problem to deal with right now, there wasn't time to do the whole trust-winning-I-swear-I'm-on-your-side thing. 

Unless he did the abridged version. 

"Look, I can see why you think this is a trap," Clint started. "It is actually incredibly suspicious that I, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, would help recruits escape, but aside from the fact that I just knocked out several of my coworkers, would you believe me if I said I'm doing it because I need your help." 

"No," Stark muttered under his breath, stepping inside and letting the door swing shut behind him. In contrast, Rogers made a "go on" motion.

"Well, I need your help. We all do. S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't safe and most of it is now under the mind control of an evil alien." Clint made eye contact with both of them. "He's too powerful for non-enhanced people to handle, he's escaped, and he could easily be causing chaos this very second. If you help us stop him, the three of you will be free to go… three… two? Weren't there three… where's the other guy?" 

"That question can mean multiple things," the third recruit said as he stepped out from behind Rogers. "But yeah. I'm here. Not sure if I believe you, though." 

Clint made a frustrated noise. "Come on! Once Nat gets here, she'll be able to—" 

"Who's Nat?" Stark interrupted. "Wouldn't be a certain redhead, by any chance? Likes shoving people in cells?" 

"Natasha Romanoff, she's my friend and another agent and she'll be here as soon as she busts out Thor—" 

It was Rogers's turn to interrupt. "Who's Thor?" 

Clint was about to answer when—

CRASH. 

Stark and the other recruit both scrambled out of the way as the control room door was wrenched off its hinges and fell to the ground. 

Two figures entered from the destruction. One was Natasha, who shot a look at Clint, mouthing ‘that's how you make an entrance.’

The other was the recruit/Norse god/target he'd tranquilized twice. Still in the shining armor and shoulder-sweeping red cape as before, but now he also wielded a huge hammer in one hand. 

"I am Thor, son of Odin," the god of thunder boomed. "Who here is willing to face my brother?" 

___

Natasha felt as though she'd brought a large bomb into a room full of explosives and was just waiting to see which would blow up first. 

Standing here, now, watching all of these people in the same room… kind of made her understand why S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted them locked up. 

Which is good, she reminded herself. Because that's exactly what we need to stop Loki. 

She'd had a few doubts when she'd gone to find Thor—Loki was his brother after all, and family always made things complicated—but when she'd gotten to his cell, it was to find him shrugging off his chains like they were nothing and casually using a massive hammer—when did he get a hammer?—to shatter the glass. Alarms had immediately begun to sound, but he didn't seem to care. 

He'd nodded to her like this had been a standing arrangement and said "Loki is free?" like he was confirming the weather.

"I don't know for sure," she had said. "But he's using some kind of mind control over most of S.H.I.E.L.D. and none of them are willing to prevent his escape—" 

"He'll be out of his cell by now, then," Thor had interrupted. "Do you have a plan?" 

She'd told Thor to follow her, and he did—fortunately the hallways around the control room were mostly empty, the guards having been diverted to the alarms around Thor's cell—all the way to the control room. Where Clint's idea of neutralizing the agents there was apparently "keep hitting them on the head again and again." 

It had worked, though, so she wasn't going to complain.

And now she was in the same room with Captain America, Tony Stark, and the Norse god of thunder. 

"S.H.I.E.L.D. had… THIS guy in a cage?" The first one to speak was, surprisingly, the unknown recruit who had been with Stark. Natasha would have to find out which one he was… 

"Not for long," Thor assured him. 

Steve Rogers came out of his daze. "You mean he's a—recruit—too?" 

"Him and his brother," Natasha explained. She tried to make it quick because they really didn't have time for this. "Which is Loki, which is the guy we have to stop before he destroys everything with his mind-magic powers, which I really hope Clint explained to you already, because we need to go." 

"You don't have to tell me twice," Stark said. "Does anyone have an actual plan or did they all just start smashing out of cells—again?" 

Thor and Rogers both gave him dirty looks, which Stark seemed willfully immune to. 

"There's a back exit," Natasha said, cutting her eyes at Stark. She took another look at the room full of recruits—at the room full of superheroes—and mentally reminded herself that this was in no way the riskiest thing she'd ever done. It wasn't even the riskiest thing that month. 

But it sort of felt like it as she said, "Follow me," and turned to leave through the now-doorless doorway. 

They didn't even make it to the end of the hallway before—

"Agent Romanoff!" 

Several curses filtered through her brain as she slowly turned to the left. Behind her, there were all the jostling noises that happened when a large group came to a halt.

Because a door on the left was open, and inside were—quick head count: almost thirty—agents, and not just of the tech-guy variety. These were trained guards, all of them armed, and had probably just been assigned to catch the missing recruits. 

The only thing that would make this worse is if they were all under Loki's control. 

"I would say 'tell me you're escorting these recruits back to their cells,' but somehow I don't think even you could handle four at once." One of the agents stepped forward, sliding a gun out of his belt. The others followed. 

This was going to end in a fight.

Natasha forced a smile anyway. "You think so little of me? I'm hurt." She dropped it and jerked a finger behind her. "Besides, I've got Barton with me." 

She couldn't take her eyes off of the agents, but she could almost see the scene behind her: Clint's hand already on his own weapon, Thor and Rogers both preparing for a fight, Stark and the unfamiliar man hidden in the back. 

"Of course." The agent pressed a button on his walkie-talkie and continued advancing closer. A barricade was forming between her and the exit. "I have to say, Romanoff, we all thought you'd be a traitor one of these days, but no one expected it'd be on the behalf of a few recruits—" 

The agent stopped talking as Natasha leapt forward and smacked into him. A second later his gun was in her hand.

The hallway exploded in an uproar. The little group of escapees charged forward and clashed with the line of agents, all of whom had whipped out their guns. 

Natasha had a gun now, too—okay, another one—but she didn't use it. She had seen the agents' eyes, and they were bright blue. 

Clint seemed to pick up on this as well, because his bow was still slung over his back, instead focusing on disarming each agent. Natasha joined him, a deadly weapon on her own even without firing a shot.

Thor hurled his hammer through the barricade of agents, who crumpled unconscious as the hammer came soaring back to the thunder god's grasp. 

Rogers was completely unarmed and dressed in prisoner's clothes, but the agents were still no match for him. As Natasha dodged a punch from the agent she was grappling with, she saw him throw himself at yet another group of them, who toppled like block towers. 

"Nat!" It was Clint, shouting over the noise of the fight.

Natasha rolled to grab another gun and shot back to her feet. "Yeah?" 

"Hit them on the—" Clint momentarily disappeared behind a wall of agents, but then he was through again. "Hit them on the head! The mind control—" He was tackled to the floor, but Natasha had gotten his message. She turned and slammed into an agent's jaw. 

He stumbled and collapsed to the floor, eyes rolling back in his head—but eyes that had just flashed back to their normal color. 

So hitting people on the head really hard was enough to get Loki out. Good to know. It was probably what Clint had done to her.

The fight was beginning to taper out, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents folding under the combined power of their little group. Natasha fought her way through three more agents—all of whom she made sure to whap on the head just in case—before she thought to worry about Stark and the other recruit. 

Who were unarmed and as far as she knew, not trained and not, well… 

Rogers hit another agent, who went flying.

… not like that. 

She scanned the room—as best she could with all the chaos, but the white prisoner's clothes were easy to spot against the black of the agents' uniforms—until she spotted them. Pressed against the wall and apparently trying to slip through the mess. 

As she watched, one of the somehow-not-already-knocked-out agents pointed a gun at them. Natasha's instincts took over and she shouted. 

"Look out!" 

Stark's eyes met her own and widened, and he started to push the other man out of the way—

The gun fired. 

And the bullet zinged off the wall, because thankfully, the two men were already on the ground. 

There was no time for little victories, however, because the agent immediately aimed again. 

The unfamiliar man held up his hands in surrender position. "You really don't want to do that—" 

The agent's finger pressed on the trigger—

—and the next second, Natasha was there, forcing the gun up at the ceiling. There was a bang, and then Natasha wrenched the gun away and knocked the agent down. 

"Thanks for that," Stark offered from the floor, still breathless and wide-eyed. 

Natasha delivered a final blow to the agent, who… yes, her eyes had returned to brown, before whipping back around. "Gratitude from Tony Stark? What… " She paused. "What's going on with him?" 

Stark looked confused, but once she pointed to the man on the floor beside him—the one he had just pushed away from the gun, the third recruit who'd escaped along with Stark and Rogers, the one whose name Natasha probably needed to learn—it clicked. 

The man was taking deep breaths, pressing his hands to his face as though trying to suppress a headache. Or maybe a panic attack? Natasha had witnessed plenty of those, and it would make sense given their situation, but something told her this was different.

"Hey, you okay there? Are we going with plan A?" Stark had shifted into a sitting position beside the man and was peering at him with what could only be described as unbridled curiosity. 

The man didn't answer, curling further into the wall behind him. Natasha cast a tense look around them, but all the agents were currently engaged with Clint, Thor, or Rogers—or Thor's hammer, which was almost a full-fledged opponent in itself. They weren't in immediate danger. 

"Bruce?" Stark pressed. 

There, there's his name. Natasha mentally ran through everything she knew about the recruits. She didn't think she'd ever heard anything about a recruit named Bruce, but maybe it was familiar… 

"Yeah… " Bruce lifted his head. "I'm good. It's good."

Stark looked almost disappointed, but Natasha didn't have time to figure out what the heck that meant before Clint was standing at her shoulder. 

He spoke quietly, but she could still hear. "You certainly took a long break." 

"Only so you could have a chance to catch up." 

It had gotten a lot quieter in the hallway during the few seconds Natasha was distracted. She turned around to see the floor littered with the unconscious bodies of the agents, as well as their fallen weapons. The only two upright figures were Rogers, whose thin prison clothing had not fared well in the fight, and Thor, who looked none the worse for wear in the slightest. He probably would have been relaxed if it hadn't been for Loki. 

"Nice work, gentlemen," Natasha said dryly. "The exit's this way." 

Rogers cast a look behind them. "Better hurry, though, they'll probably have reinforcements… are you two all right?" 

The last question was directed at Tony Stark and Bruce, who were just getting up off the floor. 

"Yeah, Cap, not all of us can win a gunfight unarmed." Stark looked around at the remains of said fight before turning to Thor. "Although I am now becoming very interested in that hammer, Point Break." 

"You coming, Stark, or are we leaving you here for the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. to find?" Natasha asked impatiently. 

"Right." 

It was a bad idea to stay there long, and probably they all knew it, which was why it made sense when they started to run down the hallway as fast as they could. 

Natasha was a pretty fast runner herself, but she was quickly left in the dust as Thor and Rogers sprinted ahead, reaching the exit door at the end of the hallway in a matter of seconds. She and Clint got there next, and Natasha immediately bent down to start typing in the key code for the door as Stark and Bruce caught up. 

Please don't have changed the code, please don't have changed the code, please don't have changed the code— 

Click. Green light. 

Yessss. 

Natasha was about to turn the handle when she heard a faint humming noise from the other side. Most people wouldn't have noticed or acknowledged it, but Natasha and her years of experience knew better.

"Back up!"

The humming grew louder until it was a dull whine, and Natasha and the others had only a second to throw themselves backward before the door exploded with a BOOM that rocked the building. 

She lay there for a moment, covered in microscopic debris, unable to breathe or see. After a few moments, the dust cleared, and she struggled upright, suppressing a groan. 

"Everyone—" Rogers coughed. "Everyone alright?" 

"Alive," came Clint's grunted response as he shook off his bow. 

"Was the explosion a result of a S.H.I.E.L.D. security system?" Thor asked. "I know it could not have been Loki." 

"Nah, he's probably long gone," Stark got up and inspected the damage. "And that bomb was one of mine—it was a Stark Industries design." 

"That it was." A figure had appeared in the hazy spot where the door had been. Natasha had the disconnected thought that this had happened a lot recently. 

The figure was a man wearing goggles and some kind of mechanical jetpack-looking thing… except with wings, huge wings that folded up as the man stepped inside. 

He nodded to Stark and said, almost sarcastically, "I'm here on a rescue mission." 

Stark was, for once, speechless. Weathering so much weirdness in a couple hours seemed to have taken its toll on his typical wit. 

No one else was saying anything either, so it fell to Natasha to actually say something, but of course what came out of her mouth was "I already unlocked the door." 

At least she didn't add ‘strange bird man,’ which was on the tip of her tongue. 

"I bet you don't have a getaway car, though," the man countered. He surveyed everyone in the hall. Natasha could only imagine what was going through his mind: Tony Stark and Captain America in matching prisoner's clothes, secret-agent-looking guy with a bow and arrow, Viking cosplay, and a random guy. Plus her. It wasn't really surprising when he clarified, "My rescue mission was for Tony Stark." 

Typical. 

"Okay, valid point," Stark spoke up. "But I highly doubt whoever sent you mentioned the fact that we are now trying to stop a menticidal alien—" 

"Because we didn't know that until twenty minutes ago," Bruce put in.

"—and these guys are basically the best shot at, uh, saving the world. Or the tri-state area or whatever. Didn't get a clear outline of his goals. But you get the picture, right?" 

The man stared at Stark for a long moment before shrugging. "There's room in the car."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	19. Proper Name, Place Name, Backstory Stuff...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team brings Steve up to speed as they prepare to confront Loki.

When a man in a mechanical bird suit offers you a ride, you take it. 

Steve waited for everyone else to get through the door before he followed them, stepping outside for the first time in… he didn't even know how long. 

Fresh air felt nice. 

The sun was bright against the roof of the "getaway car," as the man had called it (and so what if it was the weirdest car he'd ever seen, all streamlined and smooth where there should have been angles, along with whatever was going on with the headlights, it was still their only way out). 

Another man—African-American like the first, but not wearing a bird suit—stuck his head out of the window. "Who are all of these people, Wilson?" 

The bird-suited man—apparently his name was Wilson—called back. "They're prisoners, too." 

Stece caught Natasha and Clint glancing at each other. 

"Apparently they're here to defeat an alien, was it?" 

"Aliens?" A tall woman stepped out of the car and walked around to the other side, nervously scanning the group. "What do you mean ali—Tony!" 

Well, this is interesting, Steve thought.

Tony blinked like he couldn't believe what he was seeing before stumbling over to her. The two of them hovered over each other for a bit before remembering they had an audience.

Tony cleared his throat. "Miss me?" 

"I just don't understand how you can get kidnapped twice in such a short amount of time, it's like you're purposely trying to make my life difficult," the woman said, her words belying the true concern in her eyes. She looked around at the others. "And now with… these… individuals, is that Captain America?" 

"That's me," Steve said. 

"Okay, clearly you guys have a lot to catch up on," Clint interrupted, casting a wary look back at the S.H.I.E.L.D. building. "This isn't the best place to have that conversation, there's security cameras everywhere and Fury probably already sent people out." 

"Who is Fury?" Thor asked. 

"You heard the man, we can save it." Steve studied the car, which was an admittedly big van, but fitting them all in there might be a problem. 

Wilson opened one of the doors and slid inside, saying, "Good thing we got the twelve-person van." 

Steve followed him onto the street and peered inside the car. It did, in fact, look like it could fit twelve people, with its four rows of unconnected seats. 

"In, in, get in," the tall woman worried as she and Tony opened up another door and got inside. Bruce joined them, and a few seconds later, so did Thor. 

"Better hurry up, Rogers, or all the window seats'll be taken." 

Steve didn't even flinch when Natasha's voice came from two feet behind him, which really said something about the day he was having. Instead, he just ducked into the van. 

As he'd thought, it was a tight squeeze getting all of them in there, but there was still an empty row. He sat on one end, Natasha and Clint immediately taking the other two seats in the row. 

In the row in front of him were Bruce, Tony, and the tall woman, while in the very front row were two unfamiliar men: the driver and the man who'd asked Wilson what "all of these people" were doing there. 

As soon as everyone was in the car—not necessarily sitting down, but in the car—the driver hit the gas and the van sped away from the S.H.I.E.L.D. building. Everyone inside got wrenched to the left as the car turned. 

Steve stared out the window and watched the building get smaller. They were in a city now—although, wow, these buildings looked really weird—so hopefully S.H.I.E.L.D. couldn't get away with sending a squad after them in broad daylight. Hopefully, they hadn't realized the escapees had left the building yet—

A female voice from the back row interrupted his thoughts. "Thor? What are you doing here?" 

Steve looked over his shoulder to see Thor's face split into a wide grin when he realized who he was sitting next to. 

"Jane! You were part of the rescue mission as well?" 

"Yeah, we—" 

"Hey, Thor, you're back!" On Jane's other side was a young woman with dark hair, who looked just as excited to see him as Jane did.

"Darcy, it's good to see you too!" 

Steve looked at Natasha in confusion. She just shrugged and whispered something about New Mexico, because of course that would clear everything up. 

Wilson leaned forward from where he also sat in the back row—directly behind Steve—and said, "I wouldn't even try to figure out what's going on there." 

"Yeah, seems like a good call," Steve said. He paused. "You know, technically you did rescue us, so… " He offered a hand. "Steve Rogers." 

Wilson laughed but shook it. "Yeah, I know who you are, man. I'm Sam Wilson, or—" he tapped the folded-up wings. "—Falcon." 

Apparently eavesdropping, Natasha leaned over and whispered something to Clint. Steve decided to ignore it. 

"So how'd you get mixed up in all of this?" 

"There aren't too many people who can help when S.H.I.E.L.D. kidnaps Tony Stark, I just happened to be one of them." 

Both Steve and Sam cast a glance toward the front, where Tony and the tall woman—Pepper, Tony had called her Pepper—seemed to be explaining things animatedly to each other, while the man in the front passenger seat listened and occasionally sighed. The driver was listening too, judging by the sudden jerks of the car every time Tony said something like "then I had to get parts from the arc reactor" or "then they started shooting at us." 

"You've had experience with S.H.I.E.L.D., then?" Steve asked, turning back to Sam. 

"You know they don't like people with supersoldier serum running around, turns out they also don't like people running around with…" He smirked. "Advanced technology." 

Well, those wings certainly were that. 

"They didn't lock me up like you guys, though, they just confiscated these—or so they thought—and retired me from the Air Force." 

Steve frowned, wondering what the Air Force was, but before he could ask, Jane popped in, leaning two seats over from Sam.

"They didn't capture Thor at first either—well, they did, but they didn't know who he was—but they let him go back to Asgard." 

Steve shook his head. "When did all of this happen? I'd never heard of S.H.I.E.L.D. in my life, but now it's just… everywhere." 

Natasha broke away from her quiet conversation with Clint. "Well, you know, your friends helped found it. Peggy Carter and Howard Stark." 

What?

Steve stared at her, waiting for her to correct herself or say it was a joke. "That's just… not possible," he heard himself say. "They wouldn't do that… they never said… when would they even have had time?" 

Forget them having time, Peggy and Howard would never create a superhero-imprisoning secret agency! 

Natasha tilted her head. "What do—oh. Oh." 

"He doesn't know?" Darcy asked incredulously. Her words seemed to ripple through the car, and within a few seconds, everyone went.

Dead.

Silent.

The van glided down the street. It was a full five seconds before it became apparent that no one was going to take responsibility for whatever it was he didn't know.

"What is it?" Steve asked. Everyone was avoiding his eyes (Except Thor, who was looking nearly as confused as Steve himself). 

Even Natasha was biting her lip. So clearly the spy wasn't going to give him a straight answer, but someone who would… 

"Stark," Steve tried, and god, it just did not feel right addressing this guy like that, but Tony did look up. "What's going on?" 

Tony sighed and opened his mouth, and Steve relaxed an infinitesimal amount. If nothing else, he could rely on Tony to talk when nobody else wanted him to. 

"S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded after your little piloting mishap, and yeah, Peggy Carter was part of it, but it supposedly started out with 'good intentions—'" Tony made a disbelieving sort of hand motion "—to protect the world or whatever freedom and justice bumper sticker they're going for. Then, surprise, dropped off the radar, and now they're back as our lovely kidnappers." 

Had the driver turned on the air conditioner? Steve felt as though it had dropped ten degrees. His suspicions from his first interrogation were resurfacing again. 

"After I crashed?" he repeated hollowly. 

"Yeah. This is the hard part." Tony blew out a breath. "It's 2009. You've been in the ice for about seventy years." 

And he had just gotten so cold, he might still have been there. 

Seventy years…

Almost a whole lifetime, and he had missed it. 

Trapped in the ice.

"Are you… are you okay, Rogers?" Natasha's voice, clashingly gentle against the shattered fragments of what he thought he had known. 

"Peggy," he found himself saying instead of answering the question. "... we had--I mean. Is she…"

"She's still alive," Tony said hastily. "Retired, but alive, and doing fine last I checked." He made a face as though maybe he should have been checking more often.

"You know her?" 

"I met most of my dad's work friends." 

"Then… " Steve could hardly believe what he was about to say. "Howard Stark was your—" 

"Yep. Dear ol' dad died a while ago, though, so don't start planning the reunion." 

This was just one bombshell after another. At least he now knew why Tony kept simultaneously reminding him of Howard and doing things Howard never would have done at the same time. 

It was still hard to reconcile Howard and had a son, just as it was hard to reconcile Peggy and Howard and founded S.H.I.E.L.D. 

Maybe he'd really just entered some alternate reality when he'd crashed the plane. That would explain all of this utter implausibility. 

"I've got a question, then." Jane, leaning forward from the back row. "What exactly was it that made S.H.I.E.L.D. change its mission like that? You don't go from 'saving the world' to 'locking up innocent people.'" 

Steve winced, and surprisingly enough, Sam, Natasha, and Clint did the same. However, it was a safe bet that they did so for different reasons and not because they were thinking of certain actions that the U.S. government had taken during the war… World War II, at least, who knew, they could have had five more in the time he’d apparently missed--

"Yeah, see, sometimes you kind of do," Tony said. "In S.H.I.E.L.D.'s case, though…" He shrugged. 

"The way I heard it, the turning point was 1995." Natasha turned to Clint briefly, who nodded to confirm. 

That's fourteen years ago. Not fifty years from now. 

"I don't know too much about it, but apparently there was an alien attack in L.A… not your kind of aliens—" said with a quick look at Thor "—but shapeshifting murder aliens, and people flying and on fire… and so S.H.I.E.L.D. decided not to trust any overpowered being, and started the Initiative." 

"Specifically, the flying-and-on-fire person was a pilot who went missing named Carol Danvers," Clint added. "At least that's her real name, she got a ton of aliases." 

Natasha gave him a questioning look. "How do you know the details?" 

"How do you not, Fury and Phil only talk about it all the time, or at least they did until it became classified." 

"Aliases such as what?" Thor asked. When everyone looked at him curiously, he spread out his palms. "If she is an alien, as you say, perhaps I would have heard one of these aliases." 

Clint started counting off on his fingers. "Uhhh: Vers, Captain Marvel—that one I'm pretty sure Fury made up—Avenger… " He looked at Thor. "All I got." 

Thor shook his head. "None of those are familiar to me." 

"I like that, though," Tony mused, still sitting completely turned around in the seat. "Avenger. Don't you think it sounds cool, I think it sounds cool, I should make a list of these. New nickname!" 

Beside him, Pepper sighed. "Tony, no." 

"You're right." Tony snapped his fingers. "Much too cool to be a single-use nickname. You know you gotta take these things into account?" He looked at the man in the front passenger seat, who was suppressing a smile. "Back me up here, pal. This should be a group nickname." 

The man—if Steve had to guess at his name, he was pretty sure someone had called him "Rhodey" leaned over the seat. "I'd ask if they did anything to your brain while you were in there, Tony, but stuff like this is how I know they didn't." 

Tony put a hand on his arc reactor in mock wounding and looked at Pepper, who said, again: "Tony, no." 

Very quietly, from the window seat, Bruce murmured, "Tony, yes." 

Steve was probably the only one who heard him, and felt an inexplicable urge to laugh. Thankfully, Sam spoke up.

"So the backstory stuff is great and all, but does anyone actually have a plan for beating this loose mind-controlling alien?" 

"I have Mjolnir," Thor said, gesturing to the large hammer resting on the seat beside him. "But this world is unfamiliar to me, and now that Loki has the scepter, he will be hard to stop even with multiple warriors." 

And I don't have my shield, Steve thought. 

"And I don't have my suit," Tony said. 

Pepper rummaged around under her seat until she pulled out what looked like a large red and gold suitcase. But… metal… and… actually not a suitcase at all. "I didn't want to take the chance of S.H.I.E.L.D. getting to it." 

"Did I mention you're amazing?" Tony beamed. "False alarm, then, everyone, I'm ready to go." 

"Just like that?" Bruce asked. 

"Yeah, I'm not gonna let some crazy alien mess with my planet," Tony said. "No offense, hammer man." 

"I was thinking the same thing," Sam slipped his goggles back on. 

Everyone else in the van murmured their assent. 

"Rogers? What do you think?" Natasha asked. 

Steve considered for half a second before saying, "I think… Avengers? A—" 

CRASH. 

___

The car swerved and nearly went flying off the road. A screech of tires against pavement and it came to a stop with the bumper nearly touching the sidewalk. 

Pepper and Darcy had both screamed, but everyone had made some kind of noise as they were all flung to the left side of the car, which had come way too close to flipping over. Tony’s face had gotten introduced to the window very quickly and very painfully.

"Shit!" 

"The hell was that?" 

"What just happened?" 

"Everyone okay?" 

Tony didn't say anything at first, just focused on trying to get a look through the window. It was like a deer had run into the road, except that was highly unlikely in the middle of a city. 

And then he saw it. The crushed remains of a truck were lying right smack in the street in front of them. Not from an accident, though. A car didn't get those kinds of dents from a driving mishap. 

Someone had thrown this truck at them from above. 

Oh god. 

I guess we found our evil alien friend, he thought.

Steve was already shoving the door open and jumping out onto the sidewalk. Through the window, Tony could see pedestrians staring, holding up flip phones. 

Natasha, Clint, and Sam rushed outside as well. Thor started to follow, but paused to address Jane and Darcy.

"You need to get to safety, in case this fight does not go well." 

Jane's hands were gripping the seat so hard they turned white. "You know there's going to be a fight?" 

"Loki just threw a truck at us, Jane!" Darcy cried. "I think your boyfriend is making an excellent point!" 

Thor gestured to Darcy and nodded. "You see? Stark, is there a way for them to—"

"Yeah, yeah." Tony climbed out of his seat. "Happy, Rhodey, can you…?"

"Already leaving," Happy promised. 

Rhodey had his door half open already. "You sure you can handle this, Tony?" 

"Yeah, I'm Iron Man, come on." He turned to Pepper. "So, ah, Ms Potts, w—" 

Pepper stopped him right there. "None of that, because you're coming back." 

"Not gonna talk me out of it?" 

"I know better than to try." 

In the back row, Thor clasped Jane's hand for a brief moment before launching himself out of the car. He landed with his cape billowing around him and his hammer reflecting the sunlight.

Showoff. 

Tony picked up the compartmentalized Iron Man suit (case) and darted around the seats to the open door. "You coming, Banner?" 

Bruce, who had been sitting in the kind of silence you only get by either contemplating or regretting your own life choices, got up and opened his door. "Right behind you." 

He and Bruce dropped onto the curb. The doors of the car shut and Happy started to drive away. Tony caught a glimpse of Pepper through the window and then—gone. 

The others were gathered in a loose circle on the sidewalk and staring up at a towering office building.

Where a figure in green robes was pacing atop the roof. Alone… for now.

They had to move fast. 

"Okay. What's the plan?" Tony asked.

"Confrontation." Thor was already starting to swing his hammer. 

Natasha's voice was pointed. "And for those of us who can't fly?" 

"Guard the perimeter," Steve said after a sweeping glance at the scene. Even without the uniform, he looked and sounded just like the old Captain America films. "We need to surround him and make sure he doesn't have reinforcements."

Natasha nodded, tossed him one of the guns from her belt, and the two of them sprinted around to the back of the building. 

Tony pressed a button on the not-suitcase. It unfolded, piece by piece shifting and settling into shape until the full suit stood next to him. 

Smiling a little at the awed gasp from Bruce and the clearly-unintentional "whoa" from Clint, he stepped inside and let the suit close around him. 

Instantly, he was seeing everything but enhanced. The display lights flickered to life in front of him, and JARVIS's voice greeted him with a "Good to see you again, sir." 

"Missed you too, J. Let's take this up to the top." 

The suit obeyed and began to lift off. Thor noticed what was happening and started to spin his hammer even faster. 

Tony frowned. Why is he doing th— 

There was a whoosh and Thor was propelled into the air, shooting straight up the side of the building. 

"Well then." Tony shot after him, Sam joining in with those huge wings a second later. 

The plan: surround Loki. Don't let him zap anyone with the scepter. Get the scepter. Get everyone un-mind-controlled. 

The plan was working so far. But Tony knew better than to bet on it. 

The roof was getting closer and closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Getting close to the end now, folks...


	20. You Don't Just Leave Your Teammates on the Ground--Oh, Wait, Maybe You Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint finds out the disadvantages of not being able to fly. Thor confronts his brother at last.

Still on the ground, Clint cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled up at Sam Wilson. Falcon? The dude who could fly--with wings, not with a magical hammer or a giant metal suit. It was hard to keep track sometimes.

"Hey! Can I get a lift?"

But apparently, sharing a bird-related codename did not translate to teamwork, because Wilson ignored him and continued soaring up the side of the building after Thor and Iron Man. 

Clint dropped his hands to his sides. This was fine. 

He caught eyes with Bruce Banner, the only other one still there obeying gravity. There was some nodding and some wordless "yep, they just left us here"s. 

Then, by silent mutual agreement, Clint and Bruce turned in opposite directions and went to go find a fire escape.

___

Thor was the first one to land on the roof, but Loki seemed to be expecting him. 

"I was wondering when you'd get out of that cage." 

Loki seemed to be alone on the empty rooftop, but that didn't mean anything. The scepter was still pulsing and glowing in his hand. Thor wanted to lunge forward and grab it, but he could see Stark's funny flying suit and the man with bird wings landing softly behind Loki's back.

He could be the distraction. And if that didn't work out, he could always do some "Get Help" and substitute Mjolnir for his brother. 

"It was easy once I had Mjolnir," Thor answered. He kept his eyes on Loki even as he was walking back and forth. "How was it that you got out? 

Loki glanced at his scepter. "I think we both know the answer to that." 

"Why?" Thor finally asked, taking a step forward. "Why are you causing chaos on Midgard, what can you possibly hope to gain?" Why can't you just come home again— 

"I'm only doing what is my right! I was promised—by the one who gave me this—" 

"Whoever you've been listening to, you have to know their words are false." 

"Then, what, you want me to listen to you? Go back to Asgard where I'll always be—" Loki stopped. "The days where you order me are over." 

"I'm not ordering." Thor's voice was calm, in stark contrast to Loki's barely concealed agitation. "I'm asking you… as a brother… to come home." 

Loki set his jaw. "I'm afraid I'll have to refuse." 

Thor heaved a breath. “I tried.”

Wielding Mjolnir at the heavens, he shouted with all his might. "NOW!"

The sky split. Iron Man reared up in the air, aiming repulsors in a circle around Loki's feet. Falcon swooped in from behind and dive-bombed him, nearly knocking the scepter out of his hands. 

And Thor raised his hammer, calling down a blast of lightning that crackled between his fingers and over his whole body. 

Loki tried to back up, but was cornered by the small explosions bursting at the roof level. He ducked as Falcon zipped by again.

"Surrender," Thor boomed, alive with a zillion volts of electricity tingling and zapping. Thunder rumbled in the distance. 

Loki should have given up. Or at least pretended to, maybe by dropping the scepter only to reveal that—surprise! That wasn't the real scepter, you fools, it was a clever illusion! Then Thor could set Mjolnir on his chest and return to Asgard. 

And that was the first sign Thor had that something was wrong.

Because Loki didn't look like he was surrendering, or even pretending to.

He was… smiling.

"Oh, no," he whispered with amusement. "I don't think I will." 

The roof door opened.

And a horde of scepter-controlled S.H.I.E.L.D. agents emerged.

Down on the street, the same thing was happening. Doors of buildings, skyscrapers, and storefronts opening, and masses upon masses of black-clad agents marching out. 

All armed just as the guards in the prison were. 

None thinking with their own minds. 

The civilian Midgardians who were going about their day, driving or walking to the store, stopped and stared. Some laughed at first, or tried to film it on their little picture-taking devices. Then slowly, they began to realize.

And panic. 

A slightly distorted and metallic version of Tony Stark's voice came from the Iron Man suit. "Not good. Repeat: not good. What the hell is this?" 

Loki spread his arms. "It's not the force I imagined, but my true army will arrive soon enough—as soon as I take care of you." 

The brainwashed agents took out their guns. 

Thor held up his hammer. "I don't want this to end in a fight—"

The agents opened fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading--only a few chapters to go!


	21. The Battle of New York

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Avengers steel themselves to begin fighting while Sam and Steve discover some cultural differences.

Steve was racing up the back stairwell of the building when the screams started. 

He was half a step higher, the realization sinking in, when the gunshots began.

At first, there were more screams than shots, but after a horribly short time, that changed. 

He whipped his head toward Natasha. "What was that?" 

"Loki didn't want to play nice." She whirled around and began running back down the way they'd come. "Come on!" 

Steve didn't need telling twice. He vaulted over the railing and free-fell until he hit the ground two stories below. In another instant he was racing up the alleyway and into the bright daylight. 

What in the hell… ?

The streets were choked with people in black, firing guns systematically at windows, people, whatever was in the vicinity. Wait… those uniforms looked familiar.

S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.

The ones under Loki's control. 

There was a skidding sound on the sidewalk beside him. Natasha had caught up and was open-mouthed at the scene before her.

"These are my coworkers," she muttered wretchedly. "How… " 

"We can't kill them," Steve decided. He slid the gun Natasha had just given him into his waistband. "But they—but Loki—are gonna hurt innocent people, so… we gotta do something." 

Natasha met his gaze with a steely look. "All right, Captain." 

As Iron Man and Falcon zoomed down from above, Steve and Natasha plunged into the fray. 

Steve didn't have his shield. Hadn't had it since 1945. But that didn't mean no one needed protecting.

It just meant that he would have to be the shield himself. 

___

Once the agents began storming the streets, Sam immediately dove off the roof. 

Iron Man did the same, leaving Thor alone with his brother (man, those two had issues), which may have seemed like a bad idea, but that magic hammer could probably handle Loki and there were civilians in danger.

The air rushed against his face as the ground cams up faster and faster and—

He pulled out of the dive just low enough to send agents scattering. He knew they couldn't kill them—they were under mind control—but there was a way to reverse it, right? 

One of the agents he'd knocked over fired at him. He rolled, letting it ping harmlessly off the left wing.

Reversing mind control…

Maybe he could just hit some of them really hard? 

An agent leapt at him, trying to pull him out of the sky, and Sam kicked him in the head.

That's one way to do it. 

He kept fighting. Shots went off. Windows shattered. Passersby were shrieking and hiding inside buildings. Lightning flashed across the sky, even though there was no rain.

He chanced a glance up at the rooftop. It was practically a light show up there. 

Focus. Back to the ground. Fight.

As he swooped low again, knocking through agents like bowling pins, he caught a glimpse of white amid the swarming black. 

Not red, white, and blue, but… something.

"Hey there, Cap!" 

Steve looked up briefly from the agent he was fist-fighting, allowing the other guy a chance to knock him in the jaw. Sam winced, but Steve barely registered it and sent him smack onto the street.

Sam did a low sweep in a circle around Steve, taking out all the nearby agents—who fell onto the pavement, holding their heads—and clearing an empty space. 

"Thanks." Steve was breathing heavily. Sam gave him a quick nod before landing, the Falcon wings folding up behind him. 

As the two fought, a red-and-gold shape streaked by, firing repulsors at the pavement and cutting off the agents' mobility.

"Who knew that guy flew around in a big rowboat?" Steve remarked as he hit another agent. 

Sam didn't reply, busy letting the wings shoot out, knock down a few more agents, and retract again. Then it registered. "Rowboat?" 

"Yeah, the—" Steve twisted to grab away a gun. "Stark's thing, the—the metal—" 

"Yeah, the Iron Man, but what are you—do you mean robot?" 

Yell. Duck. Hit. Fire. 

"Rowboat!" 

"That's—no. Robot." 

Turn. Wings out. Wings in. Kick. 

There was a brief lull, in which Sam and Steve gave each other exasperated looks. 

"We can discuss this later!" Steve picked up a fallen agent's gun and used it to hit another, who collapsed.

Sam was already lifting off again. There were more of them, amassing at the end of the road unchecked. "Good call!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> (For those confused about the "robot" thing, it was pronounced differently until about the 1950s, so Steve wouldn't have known the new pronunciation.)  
> https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/30/1710902/-You-Are-Pronouncing-the-Word-Robot-Wrong  
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot#Origin_of_the_term_'robot'


	22. Not Going As Planned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint gets inventive during the battle, while Natasha witnesses the arrival of a new ally (sort of).

Clint had finally gotten onto a roof when the shooting began. Once it started, his first thought was ‘time to jump back down.’

It wouldn't be the first roof he'd jumped off of, and judging by the events of that day, it wouldn't be the last.

It was the wrong roof in any case. His plan had been to shoot Loki from a distance, but now that particular rooftop was exploding with lightning and what looked like… multiple shimmering Lokis? So he wasn't going to touch that. 

He could make out Natasha on the ground, a tiny speck of red and black fighting her way through the mob. He wanted to get to her, but the Black Widow could hold her own, and there were countless agents marching through the streets. Too many for Iron Man, Falcon, and Captain America to handle alone. 

Clint slung his bow off his shoulder and fired a grappling arrow. Okay, a regular arrow with some cable tied to it.

It thunked through a window a few stories below on the building next to his. The rope stretched out between the two buildings.

Just like a tightrope.

Clint took a few steps back and then a running leap—a jump off a building that wouldn't be his last. 

___

Natasha was separated from Steve approximately two seconds after they had started fighting. 

Which was to be expected, and it wasn't as though she'd lost track of him—she could see the ring he had cleared in the street—but it did mean that now there was nobody else around to deal with this… rather big problem.

That was going to get a lot bigger if she couldn't do something about it. 

Natasha was still caught in the mess of agents—endless tangling arms and legs and fists and guns—so she applied some of her best moves and broke free.

Duck under there. Take that weapon. Kick him. Low—get low—yes. Hurry.

A brief moment of air. 

She saw her opening and took it.

Dashing through the crowd—bent low to avoid attacks—she slid into a gap between two buildings and quickly flattened herself against one of the walls.

Were any of them coming after her? 

No. After all, she wasn't their target. They were only fighting her—and the rest of the Avengers (the name really stuck, didn't it)—because they got in the way. 

Natasha crept down the alleyway, the dark closing in and enveloping her from the noise of the fight. 

She was investigating another sound. 

At first, it looked like it was just Dumpsters and stacks of folded cardboard boxes, but then she spotted it: a figure hunching in the shadows, the source of the agonized sound. 

Natasha approached cautiously. "Bruce? You okay?" 

She’d thought someone was wounded back here, but he looked fine… well… physically… 

"Natasha," Bruce gasped. "Just—get out of here… I should get out of here but that's not really an—" He tensed as though trying to force something back.

Natasha backed up half a step. His eyes had turned green.

Suddenly, the pieces clicked together. She'd read a file a few years ago, but she'd never actually seen the event in person.

"Oh," was all she could say. She wanted to tell him to stop, that the agents attacking were civilians and not to kill them, but he was clearly already trying and it wasn't working.

More gunshots went off outside. More shouts. More panic and more danger that was all but impossible to shut out. 

The green was spreading further across his skin, skin that was tightening and—

"Right, I'll get out of the way," Natasha decided. Every muscle in her body was screaming at her to move, but her instincts were torn between run away—danger and person in pain—help. 

But she knew there was no way she could help. Bruce was still mostly in control, but every shot from the street pushed him further back. 

"What—are you going to—do?" The last word was a forced groan. 

Natasha lifted her chin. "I'm gonna cut off that snake's head." 

Bruce's head bobbed, but it was unclear if he was agreeing with her or if it was an involuntary movement of transformation. A split second later, as he seemed to finally give in, she decided it didn't matter. 

She dashed out of the alleyway just as the first roar of the Hulk echoed behind her.

The fight was still going strong, but the longer it went on, the more chances there were for casualties—whether agent or Avenger. 

She'd meant what she'd said: they had to strike at the top. Cut the head off the snake. 

Natasha ran for the building in the center of the fight. The one where Loki awaited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and EXTRA thanks to everyone who comments or kudos-es!


	23. I Beg Your Pardon, But: GET OFF!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the fight is still going strong, Tony encounters a bit of a setback, while Steve has a burst of inspiration.

The number of agents was thinning. Tony could see that much even as he zoomed by at top Iron Man speed. 

Or at least, the number of upright and actively violent agents was thinning. There were plenty of unconscious ones lying in heaps on the street—usually on the sidewalk or propped against a bench—as well as quite a few who'd gotten bashed on the head and shaken free of the mind control, now either staring around in horror or trying to help the rest of the agents. 

He hardly dared hope, but maybe… maybe the tide was turning. 

Maybe the Avengers was working (the name had potential, honestly, it couldn't just be him). 

Captain America and Falcon fought like the soldiers they were, leaving wide swathes of empty space on the street. Some of the agents were even looking nervous as they approached them, human instincts pushing through the mind control. 

Clint Barton—so apparently the guy's codename was "Hawkeye," but no one would ever catch Tony calling him that—may not have been able to fly, but he was doing a pretty decent job of clearing the rooftops, jumping and swinging and shooting arrows like some kind of overhyped action figure. 

Natasha Romanoff was nowhere to be seen, but she'd already made her mark—a sizable one—in the horde of agents. Tony figured she was probably just focusing on a different part of the city. 

He couldn't see Bruce, either, but that was probably for the best. The guy had two modes: 0 and 1,000,000, and no one wanted him to flip the switch in the middle of a fight that technically only had one person they were actually trying to stop. 

As for Thor, he was still on the rooftop going at it against Loki, if the firework-style blasts of lightning up there were anything to go by. 

But they could all deal with Loki together, just as soon as—

"It appears that there are very few S.H.I.E.L.D. agents still left in fighting shape," JARVIS observed, the A.I. displaying yet again a nearly telepathic quality. 

But he wasn't done yet. "However, I am picking up an additional threat coming in from the west." 

"Wait, what?" Tony wheeled around in midair, mentally cursing himself for getting cocky. "I don't like additional threats, J, I prefer my threats already taken care of, what are we dealing with?" 

But JARVIS didn't need to answer because mere seconds later, there was a rumbling noise and a huge shadow cast across the city. 

He might have mistaken it for a thunderstorm at first, especially with Sparky and his brother running around up there, but then the huge aircrafts lowered out of the sky and settled, hovering not-high-enough above the buildings, weapon systems primed and ready. 

It was a fleet of S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarriers. 

Oh, not good, he thought. Extremely not good.

"We gotta hurry, get me up there," Tony muttered, turning in midair and flying as fast as the suit could go up at the helicarriers. 

But it wasn't fast enough. 

The systems fired. 

And nobody below could avoid the blast.

Screaming, running, trying to duck for cover; some people made it inside, but the buildings themselves weren't safe, as the one in front of Tony was hit, and a huge chunk of wall dislodged itself—

—and came plummeting down on top of him, knocking him to the ground.

He couldn't see, couldn't have time to move or do anything before he was pinned against the street by a massive pile of rubble that was a skyscraper a second ago.

He gasped. All he could see was blackness. The weight pressing down above him was so heavy, he could only lift his chest to breathe because of the suit. 

Yeah, the suit, he reminded himself. It didn't fail. Yet. I'm probably not in active danger of dying.

There was a shudder, and the rocks shifted to crush even harder against him. 

… he should add a "yet" to that too.

"JARVIS?" Tony asked, but there was no answer.

He was trapped again, even if it was a different sort of prison. 

___

Steve threw himself out of the way as another volley fired from the sky. Whatever these air machines were, they were powerful. They were deadly. And they had been completely unexpected.

Just when he thought they’d had a chance. 

A nearby bus stop exploded into shards of glass and he had to cover his face with his arm to avoid getting sprayed. Tiny cuts began to leak red. 

Steve ignored that, instead running over to where a few unconscious agents were piled on the curb, directly in the line of fire. Most of the ones who were unscathed—even if they were still brainwashed—had had the sense to get out of there as soon as the helicarriers started firing, but there were too many who had collapsed in heaps on the sidewalk. 

He started to drag them away, one by one, feeling as useless as an ant moving single blades of grass away from a storm. 

Some of them stirred when he moved them, blinking normal-colored eyes and rubbing their heads. Each time, he muttered something to them: "Can you hear me?" "As soon as you can, get out of here," "You're not under Loki's control anymore." 

Sometimes he couldn't tell if they heard or not, but he kept going back. Again and again and again, occasionally having to fight the odd still-upright agent and adding them to the people dragged away.

Steve was bending down again and reaching for an agent when there came a furious roar. 

His head snapped up. "What the hell—" 

Back away back away! 

A huge and violently green creature had just barreled through the wreckage of a nearby building, announcing its presence with a roar that shook the street.

Part of Steve wanted to hide. Or yell at it to go away. He might have done either, except—

It almost looks human. Like a man, but… bigger. And greener. 

There's no way. 

The creature looked around angrily, as though whatever he—Steve decided to call it a he—had come for had just been snatched away. 

He stomped over to a nearby pile of rubble about three times his size—and that was saying something—and considered it for a brief moment before wrapping two green hands around it and pulling.

Chunks of rubble were flung up into the air, raining down over the street. Steve dove to the right just in time to avoid being showered with miniature meteorites. 

When he looked up, there was something red lying there where the wreckage had been piled a few seconds before. He recognized the Iron Man armor, and his heart gave a lurch.

But Tony was already getting up, little mechanical noises emitting from the suit, which was looking distinctly battered. 

His head tilted up toward the big green creature, and even though it was covered by the helmet, Steve imagined his mouth dropping open.

"This is… so much cooler than I imagined," Tony said. 

The creature made a grunting noise, and then, to Steve's surprise, he spoke in a low rumble. "Hulk help." 

"Heck yeah, Hulk help," Tony agreed. "I definitely owe you one, but how about for now we just try and smash those helicarriers up there?" He pointed with a red-and-gold finger up at the sky, where it looked like the guns on the side of the aircrafts were preparing to launch another assault.

"Smash!" The Hulk apparently didn't need any more prodding after that, because he immediately took a huge leap onto the side of a building, then another onto some wreckage, jump by jump making his way up to the top.

Iron Man followed—by flying, obviously. 

Steve, however, could not fly, could not jump that far, and did not have a suit that enabled him to do either. Whatever he did, he would have to do it from the ground. 

Something caught his eye. 

In the ruined section of street where the rubble had been piled, there was something that glinted red and gold. Part of the Iron Man armor, cracked from being buried underneath pieces of building. It was only the size of ,but considering how strong the armor was, it was a surprise it had broken off at all…

Hmmm…

Steve looked up at the rooftop where Thor and Loki still fought. Lightning still burst in the sky overhead. 

Maybe there was a way he could destroy the helicarriers from the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	24. You Can Do Anything with the Power of Friendship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the battle reaches its height, Thor and Steve join forces to take down the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarriers. Nearby, Loki gets a rude awakening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for my utter lack of science knowledge that I must fortify with Google.

Thor charged forward, poised to grab that scepter right out of Loki's hands. 

But as he leapt to tackle his brother, he found himself falling through empty air.

The Loki he'd been aiming for vanished in a green shimmer, and the last thing he heard as he plummeted off the side of the rooftop was a triumphant "Are you ever not going to fall for that?" 

I am going to put him in one of those snake terrariums the Midgardians have, he thought. Definitely make a note of that.

Windows whooshed past him as he fell, faster and faster. The ground rushed up to meet him and— 

—he snatched Mjolnir right out of the air and landed smoothly a few feet away. 

Now that he was no longer playing an annoying game of keep-away with Loki on the roof, Thor could see the destruction the mind-controlled S.H.I.E.L.D. had wrought on the city street. Most of the agents were taken care of, but those flying crafts—a bit like the skiffs used on Asgard, but much bulkier and more unwieldy—were still hovering in the sky, ready at any moment for another devastating round of fire.

Well, Thor would just have to destroy them before that happened. The only problem was, it would be hard to control his lightning that precisely from so far away… 

"Thor!" 

He turned. Someone was jogging up toward him. Not an agent. Once he got closer, he could see that it was the one whose name was either "Steve" or "Cap." 

Thor decided it was probably Steve, since only Stark had called him Cap—moments before referring to Thor himself as Point Break. 

"We gotta do something about those helicarriers," Steve said as he reached Thor's side. The man was dirty and bleeding, but he still looked up at the sky with determination. He nodded to Mjolnir. "And I think that's the only thing that can do the job." 

"I have been trying to do that, but I cannot focus the lightning from such a distance." 

"So bounce it off something." 

Thor looked at Steve, ready to tell him that this was no time for jokes, but the man looked completely serious. "Lightning cannot bounce, it has no mass—" 

"Yeah, I know, I meant if you got a surface, and used that to guide the lightning up there…"

Thor shook his head. "Any weak material would break under the force, and we don't have anything strong enough to—" 

Steve pulled something out. A piece of metal. Red and gold just like… Stark's armor. 

If anything would do it… 

"Is it big enough?" Steve asked.

Thor shrugged. "If not, we can always use Stark. Ready?" 

Steve clearly knew how to throw some kind of projectile, because he aimed the piece of armor with confidence. He threw it with all his strength— 

A ball of lightning crackled in the air in front of them and Thor slammed Mjolnir— 

The lightning followed the piece of armor until it inevitably overtook it, but by that time it didn't matter, it was directly on course for the helicarriers— 

Closer—

Closer—

And—

BOOM! The first helicarrier exploded in a sky-shaking burst. The electricity shot out of it from all sides, targeting the metal on the other two helicarriers. It didn't take long before all of them were reduced to falling shrapnel. 

Which plummeted out of the sky right toward them.

"Incoming!" 

Thor wasn't even sure who shouted it, but he and everyone else in the vicinity had the common sense to obey, as the sky was suddenly full of wreckage dropping like flightless birds toward the ground. 

The ground became introduced to the fallen pieces of helicarrier very quickly. 

Once all was clear, Thor raised his head, turning to Steve. "Nice work, captain." 

He couldn't resist adding, "For a mortal." 

___

All right, so his infallible plan might not be turning out to be quite so… infallible. 

Loki gritted his teeth as he watched the destroyed remains of the helicarriers—his glorious fleet!—fall to the ground like so much trash. 

It wasn't supposed to go this way. The other… what were they called here? Enhanced? Recruits? Or, ridiculous as it sounded, superheroes? 

Whatever they were, whatever they called themselves. They were supposed to distract Thor, their petty mortal egos reacting off Thor's own and becoming a volatile mixture that would end in a fight—a fight that would get his brother out of the way so he could begin his plan.

Using the scepter was only the first step. These S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and their primitive technology meant nothing to him—mere ploys in his bid to gain the attention (and approval) of the one who'd given him the scepter in the first place. And then… then his real plan could begin. A plan that would end with he, Loki, as the savior of so many lesser lives… 

But none of that would work if these humans kept teaming up and messing up his stuff. 

Loki spun around and stalked toward the other end of the roof. He couldn't stand to look anymore. Helicarriers—gone. Most of the agents under his control—gone. The few that had survived—

Interesting. 

He wasn't alone on the rooftop anymore. 

One of his S.H.I.E.L.D. agents—Natasha Romanoff, this one was?—stepped out from behind the rooftop doorway. She was alone and still unhurt, unlike most of the others. 

"What are you doing up here, you're supposed to be fighting those—those…" It was so irritating to have to stop, but he really had no idea what to call them. 

"Avengers?" Natasha offered, walking closer. Still with the stony look of one under the scepter's control. Although what she had just said was making him doubt her value as an asset. 

"Avengers?" 

"That's what they've decided to name themselves." 

"As if they could get any more childish—their little club has a name." Loki sneered, but inside he was debating the merits of sending out an illusion of himself to repeatedly hit his head against the wall. 

All right. He had limited options, but he could still succeed. Maybe there was a place on Midgard where he could hide out for a while—he wasn't ashamed to say "hide out," —regroup, start another bid for power in secret.

"Yes," Loki breathed to himself. Now just to collect the remaining agents under his control… "Agent Romanoff—" 

She moved too fast. All of a sudden, the scepter was in her hands. 

Loki turned slowly. There was no point in rushing… she'd just done something incredibly stupid.

And she knew it. He could see the fear in her eyes.

In her green eyes. 

"Why would you do all that…" Knives appeared in his hands. "Only to die for it?" 

Natasha spoke quietly but with confidence. "Oh, I don't think I'll be dying for it today." 

And the Avengers converged on the roof.

Iron Man, speeding down from the clouds, palms glowing at full power.

Falcon, wings outstretched and catching the sun in a blinding burst of silver light before retracting so he could execute a landing. 

Hawkeye, coming from—seriously, did the guy just shoot a grappling arrow and go from that roof to this roof who does that—seemingly nowhere, brandishing his bow and arrow. 

Captain America, charging up from the fire escape—at last getting to fulfill his plan—streaked in red blood and white prison clothes with the blue sky framing his determined leap. 

The Hulk, a monstrosity Loki had hoped never to see, slamming a dent into the metal roof as he stood along the others, ready to fight with them. 

Even Thor, of course Thor was still here, setting down from the heavens with Mjolnir in his grasp, cape billowing around him as he faced Loki with an expression that was so irritatingly not smug, that Loki had to look away—

And Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, under no one's control but her own, carrying her stolen prize, the scepter.

All surrounding Loki. 

He swallowed and slowly raised up his hands. "If you like, we can forget this all happened…" 

But a look around the group, around the Avengers, was enough to tell him that that wasn't going to happen. 

"Yeah, that's not gonna happen," Tony Stark said from inside the Iron Man armor. He waved a red-clad hand. "Look at all this, it's just—S.H.I.E.L.D. can register complaints, but they're gonna be short a prisoner, he's got to go as far away from this planet as Sparky's hammer can fly." 

"I don't think anyone at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s gonna argue with that." Clint Barton still had his bow pointed at Loki.

Natasha half shrugged. "Oh, they might. Think of the paperwork they’d get to fill out." 

"This isn't the time," Steve Rogers broke in. He gestured to Loki, who gave a narrow-eyed stare back. "He's surrendered—" 

Loki was about to open his mouth to protest—this was not a surrender, this was a retreat, and a strategic one at that—but the moment he moved, the Hulk stomped closer and glared. 

"Puny god be quiet." 

Loki glared right back. "I—" 

"QUIET!" 

Loki drew himself up to full height and gave the Hulk his fiercest look. The other Avengers watched in trepidation. "I am not some 'puny god,' you pathetic mortal. I am Loki, God of Mischief, and I will not surrender to a bunch of half-rate—"

The last thing Loki, God of Mischief, saw, was a large green fist careening toward his face.

Scratch that. The last thing he saw was complete darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone! Really getting close to the end now... (☉_☉)   
> As always, all of you who comment or kudos are very much appreciated!


	25. All Important Movies End With a White Screen. And Tying Up Loose Ends.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now that Loki is defeated, the newly formed Avengers must decide what to do next.

The Avengers watched as the Hulk continued to smash Loki around, some with what looked like amusement, some of them wincing each time another hard  _ smack  _ echoed across the roof.

Steve could even feel the vibrations through his feet. And the Hulk just… kept… 

_ Smash. Smash. Smash.  _

_ Oooh, that looked like it hurt.  _

"Ok… ah, Hulk?" Tony asked after a while. "How about we just… stop that… maybe take a break… no?" 

"No  _ break _ !" But the Hulk did drop Loki on the roof, where he lay stunned. 

"So much for surrender," Natasha muttered, a slight smile whisking across her face.

Sam shrugged. "Well, we tried." 

Fifteen minutes later, the Avengers were back on the street, now with a tied-up Norse god (not that Steve actually believed they were gods) in tow. Thor was leading him, much to Loki's chagrin, but every time he looked like he wanted to protest, the Hulk—apparently what he was called, but seriously, where had he even come from?—growled at him and Loki quickly shut up. 

Sam was walking next to him, goggles off and wings retracted, so he could have been wearing a strange metal backpack. Natasha and Clint were whispering to each other, their own little huddle at the back of the group. Along with Steve, they appeared the most normal, and so were less a target of the stares. 

As they walked down the street, the remaining pedestrians peered out of shattered windows to gawk at them. It was hard to say who was attracting the most attention: Thor and Loki in their Asgardian clothes—plus the presence of the hammer and the fact that Loki was tied up—, the Hulk, who was quiet now but still _extremely_ hard to miss, or Tony, who was blatantly still inside the Iron Man suit, practically a beacon of red and gold.

And predictably, the first to speak.

The visor of the suit flipped down, revealing Tony's face. "So I get that we just kinda saved a city and all, but is anyone else hungry?" 

"They  _ didn't _ feed us in the S.H.I.E.L.D. cells," Steve pointed out under his breath.

"Exactly. Everyone listen to your captain over here." Tony continued unabashedly. "What do you guys say we get some sha—"

"It's not the time for food, man, look at that," Sam interrupted.

Steve, along with everyone else, quickly turned his gaze to the end of the street, where a small group of people was rapidly approaching. 

_ They're S.H.I.E.L.D _ ., he realized, and started forward, but Natasha stopped him. 

"They're not mind-controlled anymore," she whispered, and tapped the scepter she was still holding. He'd originally assumed she was carrying it as a necessity, or maybe a kind of badge of honor, but now he noticed her death grip on it. She didn't want anyone getting ahold of that thing.

And honestly, looking around at the city wreckage, Steve could respect that.

The agents drew closer, led by a man with a black eye patch. Once they were less than fifteen paces away, most of them stopped where they were, but a woman and a man followed the eye patch man all the way up to the Avengers. 

Natasha spoke first. "Hey, Fury." Her tone was surprisingly light given the circumstances.

"Agent Romanoff." The man in the eye patch surveyed the group. "Must say, I didn't expect to find you all in the same place." 

"I don't believe we've met," Steve said, keeping his voice as neutral as he could. These people had had them in cages mere hours ago; he was prepared for things to get ugly. 

"Nick Fury," the man offered. "Director of S.H.I.E.L.D." 

"What's that, never heard of it." Sam's voice was quiet, but Steve could still pick it up—and apparently Fury could too.

"I understand your first impression of us might not have been… as friendly as we'd like it to be." 

"The last time I had contact with your organization, I had the understanding that you wanted to  _ improve  _ your relationship with powerful beings," Thor interrupted. 

It was to Fury's credit that he didn't quail under Thor's thunderous glare. "And that still holds true." 

"Yeah, that makes sense," Tony chimed in. "I always want to become best friends with the people who kidnap me. Ask the Ten Rings, we still send Christmas cards." 

The Hulk huffed in agreement. 

"Technically, the kidnapping wasn't our first choice," the woman said. "We sent Coulson here in to try and recruit Iron Man through normal means—" 

"But that was just for me, wasn't it? Because I'm just the guy in the suit, and anyone could do that? You lock Thor up no questions, cause he can't  _ step out  _ of being an alien, a lab mishap somehow justifies  _ torturing _ —" Tony stopped for a minute before barreling right on. "And I bet the Cap here didn't even get defrosted before he was in chains." 

The woman winced. "That's why we're here. Coulson?" 

The other man reached for a large black bag he'd had slung on the ground. It was a really inconvenient shape, too—big and round and—

Coulson unzipped the bag and pulled out the shield.

_ The  _ shield. The Captain America shield.

His shield? 

"This belongs to you," Coulson said as he handed the shield to Steve, who took it mechanically. "I wasn’t sure how it would hold up after seventy years in the ice, but according to Fitzsimmons’ tests, it was barely affected. Wow. I mean, I can't believe I actually get to touch it, I mean—" 

"Phil?" Clint shook his head. "This is where you stop." 

"Right." Coulson backed up so he was standing beside the woman again. 

Steve was left with the shield in his hands, just the same as it had been a few days a—seventy years ago. It wasn't damaged or anything from being submerged in the ice for that long. At least not on the surface. 

He focused and looked back at Fury. "I don't understand why you're giving me this." 

"The events of the past few days may have—tweaked our thinking about the way we've been running things." Fury nodded to Steve. "It seems power shouldn't be feared if it's in the right hands… and apparently, my superiors think those hands are your own." 

"What exactly are you saying?" Sam asked. 

Fury didn't even look surprised at Sam's presence. "I'm saying that as of now, it might be a good idea to keep the  _ Avengers  _ going." 

_ And we're really stuck with that name now, huh.  _

Steve knew that this reprieve probably wouldn't last. Authorities tended to pay more attention to half-destroyed cities than paper-thin inspirational quotes about power. It was only a matter of time until a meeting was called, until they started being seen as a threat again, until they'd be forced to see the inside of a cell again. Who knew how long it would be before— 

"There's one more thing," Fury said. "A battle went on here—no one can deny that. We're going to need reports from all of you about your involvement. Stark, we'll start with—" 

An alarm began to blare from the Iron Man suit. Tony's face took on an expression that was just slightly  _ too  _ shocked, and made a show of looking down at the display. 

Cue double take. "Will you look at that!" 

"Stark, turn that noise down," Fury barked.

"No can do, see this is actually the emergency signal? JARVIS, there's an emergency, right?" Tony asked. 

The AI's voice came out of the suit with perfect timing. "There is indeed, sir. It appears to be a malfunction of the arc reactor." 

"Very bad!" Tony exclaimed. "I can't possibly be debriefed now, this needs to be fixed. Come on, big guy—" (to the Hulk) "—assorted others…" (to the rest of the Avengers) 

Steve had to force himself not to laugh. Tony was so obvious, but how S.H.I.E.L.D. would call him out on it… 

"Stark, we know that's a load of bullshit—" 

Tony was already backing away, a movement made even more ridiculous in the suit. "I had to take apart my reactor to escape, that's probably why it's not working—I could sue, you know, Pepper's got some great lawyers." 

Fury sighed and turned to the woman, who just shook her head as if to say “ _ it's not worth it.” _

The agents packed up and left, and a few minutes later, black helicopters were buzzing away overhead. 

"So do you think we're fired now?" Natasha said to Clint, who laughed. 

"Either way, what do we do from here?" 

"Loki must be brought back to Asgard," Thor said, giving the ropes a little shake. Loki rolled his eyes. "After that… I do not know. I want to return to Earth to see Jane again…" 

"Then we're going to need some kind of plan, otherwise S.H.I.E.L.D.'ll come after us for the storm warnings if nothing else," Sam pointed out.

Steve gazed around them. The shield was still a weight in his hand. "But there's nowhere for us to go where we won't be… " 

"Cage," Hulk finished succinctly.

Tony grinned. "I don't know about that." He spread out his hands like he was already sketching out a building plan. "How do you guys feel about a tower in New York?" 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And, that's all, folks!
> 
> A SUPER huge thank you to everyone who's read this far, kudos-ed, or commented. I seriously cannot put into words how much you're appreciated. <3
> 
> Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it! *plays Avengers theme song*


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